Seeing the Monuments
by Lesera128
Summary: Booth is honored for valor in Afghanistan at a banquet, Brennan attends, guilt rears its ugly head, & Booth has to resort to drastic measures in the limo on their ride home to get rid of Brennan's melancholy. Sequel to "When She Ran Away." AU. Complete.
1. Part I: Setting the Scene

**Seeing the Monuments**

**By**: Lesera128 & _dharmamonkey_

**Rated**: M

**Disclaimer**: We still don't own anything...and it's still pretty obvious that we don't—at least to us. And, yes, our permanent mailing address has now been changed to the sandbox—you know which one.

**Summary**: Booth is honored for valor in Afghanistan at a formal banquet, Brennan attends, guilt rears its ugly head, and Booth has to resort to drastic measures in the limo on their ride home to get rid of Brennan's melancholy. Sequel to "When She Ran Away." Set during early season 6. Very AU, and very, very M.

**A/N**: This story is a sequel to "When She Ran Away." It's set approximately two weeks after the conclusion of that story. It was inspired, in part, by the opening ten minutes of the 1987 movie "No Way Out." Similarities between the opening scenes of that movie and this fic are most likely deliberate.~

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><p><strong>Part I: Setting the Scene<strong>

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><p>As he wound his way through the crowd of people towards the front of the reception hall, Booth glanced down at the slender, white-gloved arm threaded around the crook of his elbow and couldn't help but smile. It wasn't the black-tie nature of the event, or the medal he knew he would be awarded that night, but rather the woman at his side that made him feel ten feet tall. Brennan looked absolutely stunning, for lack of a better word.<p>

An hour earlier, when Booth had arrived at her apartment to meet her so they could ride over together to the Marriott Crystal City in Arlington, he'd stood in front of her door and straightened his bow tie for what must have been the fiftieth time before he rang her doorbell. Moments later, when she opened the door, his mouth fell open and he felt himself wobble a little on his feet at the sight of her. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on.

As she opened the door, Brennan tucked a small wisp of hair behind her ear. She'd just finished pulling on one of her elbow length white gloves and held the other one loosely in her hand. She stood in front of the door wearing a full length evening gown in a color that was a cross between royal blue and a peacock blue. Sleeveless, it hugged her tightly across her chest as the sweetheart bodice accentuated her breasts and the creamy white skin of her decolletage. Intricate beadwork, a mixture of lighter blue seed pearls and darker blue reflective beads, was designed to draw the eye to her chest, so a necklace was unnecessary. The tightness of the bodice eventually gave way to a looser and more flared satin skirt. Although Booth couldn't see them, Brennan wore a simple pair of relatively modest two-inch close-toed heels that had been dyed to match the dress. Her hair had been styled in a messy chignon, while a dark smokey eye, heavy mascara, and light apricot lip gloss completed her ensemble.

For Brennan's part, when she opened the door and saw Booth standing there in his full blue evening mess uniform, she couldn't help but stare and smile, open-mouthed, for several long seconds while she took in the sight of him. She'd always known Booth to be the kind of man who wore a tuxedo very, very well, albeit as infrequently as he could. While she'd seen him in a tux at least a half-dozen times over the years—both at Jeffersonian events as well as at various private social affairs, including Angela's and Hodgins' cancelled-at-the-altar church wedding—his current attire was still something quite...different. When Brennan had opened the apartment door, she was slightly unprepared for what she saw standing on her doorstep that night as he stood slightly fidgeting as he awaited his date's attention.

Booth was clad in a short, dark blue gabardine jacket, lighter blue, high-waisted gabardine trousers with a gold braid running from the bottom of the waistband to the bottom of his trouser leg, a white shirt with French cuffs, gold cufflinks, a black cummerbund, and a black bow tie. On the sleeves of his jacket, he wore his Sergeant Major's stripes and, just above his cuffs, four campaign stripes to denote the length of his Army service. A group of medals hung from his left lapel, including the Bronze Star he'd received for gallantry in action in Kosovo and a Purple Heart (which Brennan knew he had been awarded several times), and above them, miniature versions of his Ranger tab and Combat Infantryman's Badge (the latter with two stars, indicating he had received the award for three separate wartime deployments). On his right lapel, he wore the crest of the Third Special Forces Group.

As she visually inventoried all of the uniform's accouterments, Brennan realized that his uniform was like a wearable resume, easily read by any other serviceman as a quick summary of Booth's background and accomplishments. She finally brought her gaze up and observed a wide grin break across his smooth, perfectly clean-shaven face. His dark brown hair was neatly trimmed to a very—and, Brennan noted silently, strokably—short regulation-length on the back and sides. He wore a black service cap with a shiny patent-leather visor the shape of which, she observed, seemed to accentuate his high, prominent cheekbones.

Not often at a loss for words, all Brennan could say upon seeing him was a quietly-squeaked, "Wow."

With a short laugh, Booth nodded at her as he said, "Hey, that was supposed to be my line."

The _wow _of the moment had admittedly faded a bit as they waited for the limo service Brennan had hired to finally show up and whisk them off to the event. Once she'd disappeared back into the apartment only for a minute to finish pulling on her other glove and to grab her evening clutch, she'd hastily locked up and took Booth's arm as he offered to escort her down stairs to wait in the lobby for their ride. The limo was at Brennan's insistence, obviously, not Booth's. She'd insisted for several different reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she didn't want them to have to worry about driving on such an important night. However, the main reason—even if she wouldn't have admitted it to Booth—was because there was no way she was going to show up at an event like _that _in a dress like _this _in Booth's SUV, where the dress could be unduly wrinkled, or a dirty old taxi cab, where something much worse might happen. Booth had grumbled loudly at the idea of not being able to drive, and the driver's tardiness did nothing to warm him to the idea. However, after lounging in the back of the stretched-out black Lincoln Town Car on the twenty-minute drive from Georgetown to Arlington across the bridge that separated D.C. from Virginia, stroking his fingers along the dark blue satin covering Brennan's thighs, Booth's grumbling was duly silenced. The longer he looked at her in that dress, the shorter he prayed the evening would be, because he swore he wanted nothing more than to slide that very lovely dress off of her delicious frame the very second they got home.

Booth shook off the thought, however delicious and arousing it was, and tried to bring his attention back to the present. Thankfully, the matter was made easier on account of two loud and slightly intoxicated colonels who stood in their way as they tried to make their way to their assigned table. He tried not to eavesdrop, but overhearing terms like _resupply _and _aerial reconnaissance _and acronyms like _PCS _and _FAC _quickly reminded him where he was and among whom. He'd been to a formal military event or two in the past, and he'd been to a number of formal events with Brennan over the years, but this was the first time those two worlds had collided for him. It was strange, in a way, but he was grateful to have her with him that night.

"Bones—"

As they waited for the pair of full-bird colonels to step aside, Booth leaned over and pressed his lips lightly on Brennan's exposed shoulder. "Have I told you that you look absolutely incredible tonight?" he whispered to her, inhaling a deep whiff of her perfume—a complex blend of peony, freesia, violet, bergamot, jasmine and roses—as his lips brushed past her ear. "Absolutely amazing, Bones."

She turned her head slightly and smiled. "Yes," she whispered back. "I believe that you've conveyed that sentiment several times to me this evening."

"Hmmm," he mumbled, kissing her temple softly and then leading her past the chatting colonels and towards the front of the room. "Well, just so you know, it doesn't make it any less true..."

Brennan leaned into him and squeezed his forearm. "Thank you."

"And, I might just say it again...just FYI," he chuckled.

"Duly noted," Brennan smiled at him. She paused and then said, "You know, Booth, you've always looked very attractive in a tuxedo, but I must admit, there's something particularly handsome about how you look tonight." A wide grin broke across his face at her remark. "I believe the old saying about a man in uniform might be appropriate tonight."

"Why?" Booth asked, teasing her lightly. "You've seen me in my Class-A's before, Bones," Booth pointed out, his voice bright as he spoke through his irrepressible smile. She arched her eyebrow and shot him a nonplussed look at his words, her nonverbal clues clearly conveying to him that she was seeking clarification of his words. "You know, the dark blue dress uniform I wore—" He cut himself off, suddenly realizing that if he continued to speak he'd do something that probably wasn't the best of ideas given Brennan's recent tendency to subsume herself in guilt about their past. Booth let his words trail off as he didn't want to remind her, or himself for that matter, about the two weeks she'd spent two years earlier thinking he was dead because the FBI faked his death when Sweets deliberately failed to inform her that he was not, in fact, dead. He saw her purse her lips, turn her head slightly as she shook off the memory—clearly remembering the event despite his efforts to circumvent that happenstance—and then look over at him again.

"Booth," she said quietly, trying to flush away the negative emotions conjured up by his reference to his staged funeral. She stroked the smooth fabric of his wool uniform jacket and toyed with the gold service stripes above his cuffs. "I believe it to be an accurate statement that you look even better tonight given the formal black tie aspects of this particular uniform variant. I think you look even more—what is the term? Ah, yes: _dashing_. You look very dashing in this attire."

He raised his eyebrows and was about to respond when a sonorous baritone called out from behind him. "Sergeant Major Booth!"

Booth turned his head and smiled at the familiar voice.

"Captain Robinson," he said as Brennan unhooked her arm from his, freeing him to salute. He brought his arm up to salute the officer, a tall black man in his late twenties with high cheekbones and intense eyes.

Robinson returned the salute lazily with a relaxed grin. "It's good to see you again, Booth," he said, letting some of the strictures of decorum fall to the side. Robinson's eyes darted over to Brennan and back to Booth, and he arched an eyebrow expectantly.

Booth turned to his partner, snaked his arm gently around her waist , and brought his hand to rest on the small of her back. "This is Captain Robinson," he said as Brennan extended her hand to him. "He was the commanding officer of my Special Forces detachment when I was in Afghanistan," he explained. "Captain, this is my partner, Dr. Temperance Brennan."

Robinson raised his chin and smiled in recognition, remembering all the times he'd heard the Sergeant Major talk about his _partner_, and all the times he wondered about what the precise nature—or, rather, extent—of Booth's relationship was with his FBI partner. "Ahhh, of course. Who else would it be, huh, Booth?" He turned and nodded at Brennan. "It's a pleasure finally to meet you, Dr. Brennan," Robinson said. "Booth's told me quite a lot about you."

"All good, I hope," she said with a wry grin, flinching slightly as Booth pinched her playfully. "Booth's also spoken very highly of you, Captain."

The captain shrugged, smiled, and then turned back to Booth.

"So, you clean up pretty good, Sergeant Major," he said with a smirk. Booth laughed, but Brennan cocked her head and gave the captain a strange look.

"Sergeant Major Booth observes very good personal hygiene," she noted with a tilt of her head at both men. She turned to Booth as she said, "Unless you were forced to deviate from your normal extensive grooming habits when you were deployed for some reason?" Booth's eyes widened a little at her question, and he couldn't help as he coughed at her remarks.

"Bones," he whispered, blushing slightly. "It's just an expression," he explained in a low voice. "It's the captain's way of saying I look good dressed up in the formal mess uniform."

Brennan raised her chin and considered his words. "Oh," she said, with a nod at Robinson after a few seconds. "Of course. Booth is one of the few men I know who can actually tie his own bow tie."

Robinson narrowed one eye and looked at Booth with a smirk for a moment before the captain began to laugh. "Indeed, there's no doubt that Booth is a man of _many _talents." Brennan felt a pinch in her side as her partner signaled for her to keep any clever responses to _that _observation strictly to herself. "Dr. Brennan," the captain said, his voice and facial expression suddenly drawn into a tighter, more serious mien, "I must tell you that Sergeant Major Booth is one of the bravest soldiers that I've ever had the honor to serve beside, and without a doubt, the most outstanding non-commissioned officer I've ever worked with in the six years I've been in the Army."

Booth blushed a little at the compliment and glanced over to see Brennan's reaction. He was relieved to see a smile form on her lips and couldn't help himself as he cut off her response as he looked at Robinson with a nod of his own. "Those are very kind words. Thank you, sir," he said gratefully.

"It doesn't make them any less true," Robinson said with another nod. Wondering, perhaps, if he might be able to use Booth's companion to help him in his earlier quest that had failed so spectacularly thus far, Robinson tilted his head back at Brennan. "You must be very proud of him, Dr. Brennan."

"I am," she nodded with a smile. "Very."

"Then," Robinson continued. "I have to tell you, though, that even though I understand all the reasons why Booth wishes to leave the Army once and for all—" His gaze fell to Brennan's narrow waist, and he watched Booth's fingers move slightly as he seemed to grasp the round swell of her hip that much more tightly. "There's no doubt that Sergeant Major Booth's separation from the Army represents a great loss to it as an institution, and particularly to the Third Special Forces Group of which he was a valued member."

Brennan narrowed her eyes at Robinson as she tried to discern the meaning of the subtle shift in his demeanor as she considered his words. _A great loss? _Brennan thought to herself. _Of course, it's a great loss. A man with Booth's set of skills isn't common. But, even still, if I didn't know any better, I'd say the good captain is laying on the accolades a bit thick_—_metaphorically speaking, of course, _she thought, carefully reflecting on the captain's words. Many questions raced through her mind at that moment, but she knew none of them were appropriate to verbalize under the circumstances, so she bit her lip and merely nodded with a smile.

"He's the best," Robinson nodded at Booth and then turned his attention back to Brennan. "But, of course, you already know that."

"Yes, I do," Brennan said, as she tried to keep the suspicion she was feeling from creeping into her voice.

Robinson took that moment to take a breath and was considering how much to press the Sergeant Major's date when Booth himself noticed the change in the younger man's demeanor. Not 100% certain of what Robinson might speak next, Booth decided it was better to not take a chance where Brennan was concerned and did his best to end the conversation.

"That's very kind of you to say, sir," Booth said again, as he nodded at Robinson. "Thank you."

Reluctantly turning his head to Booth, Robinson replied, "You're quite welcome. And, I meant_ every _word, Sergeant Major." Robinson held Booth's gaze for a moment.

Forcing himself to maintain a casual demeanor, lest Brennan read a change in his body language, Booth smiled. "Yes, sir."

"Well," Robinson said, knowing his point had been conveyed. "I think I'll stop monopolizing your time."

"It was good to see you, sir," Booth said, feeling a bit of relief at the man's impending exit. "And, the best of luck to you as well, sir, in your new assignment at the Pentagon. I'm sure your wife is glad to have you back stateside for a while."

Robinson shrugged, wondering how much Booth had meant that particular comment for the captain and how much for his partner. Although Booth had never told him as much, the captain wondered if the stunning woman in front of him was in large part the reason the numerous entreaties in the last four weeks seeking to convince the Sergeant Major to reenlist all failed miserably. Robinson couldn't say for sure.

"Yes, she is," he responded with a faint smile. "Indeed she is...we both are, actually." Glancing once more at Brennan, he said to Booth, "Enjoy yourself tonight—both of you. You deserve this, Booth. And, if I don't talk to you between now and the end of the night, congratulations."

"Thank you, sir," Booth nodded again.

"And, hey—once you're all outprocessed and everything, you know, and all back into your FBI gig, give me a ring and let's do lunch, alright?" Robinson shook Booth's hand heartily and added with a grin, "_Hooah_."

"_Hooah_,"Booth grunted back before the captain disappeared back into the swirling crowd.

Seeing Brennan's arched eyebrow, he said with a sheepish grin, "It's an Army thing. I'll explain it later."

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><p>Booth stood up from his seat at the table near the front corner of the stage and slowly walked up the stairs, glancing back over to Brennan, whose incredible blue dress reminded him of the color of the locally cut, hand-polished, sapphires he'd seen for sale in the bazaars in Qūryah and Marjeh. He nervously flexed his hands into a fist as he stepped onto the stage, taking one last glance at his partner who he swore simply shimmered as she sat there, her pale eyes gleaming against the bright blue fabric that framed her shapely, silky white shoulders. The sight of her, seated so elegantly at their table next to a general's silver-haired wife, filled him with a heart-swelling pride that propelled him across the stage. Once he judged he was six paces away from the podium, Booth stopped sharply, snapped his feet together, and crisply saluted the four-star general who stood before him, flanked on one side by the Secretary of Defense and on the other by the Afghan Minister of Defense.<p>

"Good evening, sir," Booth said evenly, holding the salute firmly against his brow.

"Good evening, Sergeant Major," the general replied, quickly returning Booth's salute. "At ease, Sergeant Major."

Booth dropped his salute and let his hands fall to his sides, crossing his hands loosely behind his back and relaxing his stance so that his feet were set a more comfortable distance apart. He glanced once more at Brennan out of the corner of his eye—his jaw twitching as he struggled to suppress a proud grin as he saw her thin-lipped smile, her pale gray eyes twinkling as she watched him from her seat—then swiveled his eyes forward again and looked at the general, whose lip quivered into a fleeting smirk as he noted Booth's not-so-subtle glance over to his female companion.

The general gave Booth a quick nod and turned to the podium to face the audience. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "Thank you all for coming here this evening. Tonight, I have the pleasure of presenting a soldier with one of the highest honors given for gallantry in combat." He looked over at Booth, who still stood at ease, facing the podium with his shoulder to the audience. Stepping away from the microphone, the general said to Booth with a slight jerk of his chin, "Please turn to face the audience, Sergeant Major."

Booth, who had been awarded medals before, but not in this kind of setting, swallowed nervously and complied, turning slightly on his heel to face the assembled crowd, all of them seated with their eyes watching him as they raised their glasses and slowly sipped their drinks. One among them, a ravishing woman in a brilliant sapphire gown with shiny auburn curls framing her square, slender jaw, toyed with the stem of her champagne flute, rotating it back and forth over the slippery surface of the damask tablecloth. Booth smiled at her briefly, trying to catch one last lingering look at his partner's beautiful gray eyes before he had to put his game face back on. Brennan looked up, met his eyes only briefly with a faint smile quickly pasted on her face before she quickly looked away again. He blinked, unsure of what to make of her sudden reticence, then swallowed once, lifted his chin, and refocused his attention as the general began to read the citation.

"It's my honor," the general said, his gravelly voice resonating though the banquet hall, "on behalf of the President of the United States of America, to present the Silver Star to Sergeant Major Seeley J. Booth, United States Army, for gallantry in action on April 4th, 2010 while serving as the Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge for Operational Detachment Alpha 3447 (ODA-3447) assigned to Special Operations Task Force South in Helmand Province, Afghanistan in support of Operation ENDURING FREEDOM."

Booth's eyes again sought out his partner's for a moment, and he again observed a certain hesitancy in her slack-jawed expression as she listened to the beginning of the general's narrative. He took a breath and swallowed once more, but otherwise remained perfectly still as he stood before hundreds of dignitaries—and above all, before his very much loved partner—while the general began to read the citation.

"Sergeant Major Seeley J. Booth heroically distinguished himself by gallantry in action in the face of the enemy while engaged in combat operations with ODA-3447 in Marjeh, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in support of Marine Corps Regimental Combat Team Seven and affiliated Coalition forces."

_Gallantry in action, _Brennan thought wryly, the words echoing in her mind as the general's voice rang through the hall. _Huh. That's not how it started out though, was it? It wasn't supposed to start out like that at all. _

"After six days of heavy direct fire contact against insurgent forces, the ODA received information from local nationals that a platoon-sized element of insurgents were patrolling in the vicinity. On April 4th 2010, a combined, dismounted reconnaissance patrol consisting of an Afghan National Army (ANA) company, a United States Special Forces Headquarters element, a Marine Route Clearance Squad, and an Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) Team departed Marjeh for a two-kilometer reconnaissance patrol. During this patrol, Sergeant Major Booth was the sole combat advisor to a 69-man ANA Company."

As the general continued to read the citation narrative, Booth couldn't help himself as a flood of memories invaded his mind's eye.

"_So what exactly would I be doing?" Booth remembered asking Colonel Pelant point-blank as they sat at the diner. "Who exactly would I be training? American soldiers, right?"_

"_This assignment would be to the Third Special Forces Group," Pelant replied opaquely._

"_So you'd be sending me to Fort Bragg," Booth said. "Right." His time in the Rangers, when he wasn't deployed, had been spent at Fort Benning, Georgia. This time he wouldn't be a Ranger__—he'd be a Green Beret. He'd spent enough time in fatigues to know how the Green Beret gig would go: small units, big responsibilities, total secrecy, not unlike being a sniper, really, except the whole concept was a bit more_—_well, vague._

"_You'd be sent to Fort Bragg for a brief course of training in local language and customs," the colonel explained, "and then deployed into theater with your Special Forces detachment."_

_Booth sighed and looked up at the ceiling as he mentally thumbed through the organizational structure of the Special Operations Command. "Is this your way of telling me I'd be training Afghan soldiers and not American ones?" He knew, from his time in the Rangers and his own knowledge of military history, that the Green Berets deployed in twelve-man detachments and often served as advisers to indigenous military units in the country where they deployed._

_Just advisers, Booth thought grimly. Right._

"Halfway into the movement, the patrol came under intense small arms, Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG), and mortar fire from 25 to 30 insurgents hidden in unidentifiable locations. Although unknown at the time to Sergeant Major Booth and the other Coalition forces, the enemy fire originated from three bunkers, reinforced with sandbags and logs that were concealed in the thick vegetation of the canal system around. These bunkers were so effectively concealed that they were unidentifiable at distances greater than 20 to 30 meters. There were two additional fighting positions, reinforced with bricks in a mosque and a Red Cross clinic. The bunkers were armed with three machine guns, one RPG, and stockpiles of ammunition. To add to the complexity of the situation, the engagement area was tied into the canal system which included a 15-foot canal as an obstacle between the Taliban fighting positions and Coalition forces' nearest available cover."

_"Lieutenant Dawar!"_

_Booth held his open hand next to his mouth and hollered to the twenty-one year-old ANA officer who crouched against a wall thirty feet away with his M-16 braced against his thigh as he stared at another young man, a recent recruit newly arrived from Kunduz province, who lay bleeding and lifeless in the sand. "We've gotta move this company!"_

_Booth narrowed his eyes, his nostrils flaring as he watched the young officer succumb to panic. He adjusted his grip on his M4 carbine, keeping his trigger finger flush against the side of the rifle's receiver, grunted, and glanced to each side before stepping out from behind his cover and sprinting over to Lieutenant Dawar's position. A bullet whistled over Booth's right shoulder as he dove into the dirt next to Dawar. "Look, lieutenant, that position over there," he said, nearly having to yell as he struggled to be heard over the constant crackle of automatic weapons fire. "It's totally defiladed," he explained, his words coming in short, heavy pants as he caught his breath. "We can't hit 'em back from here, Lieutenant. If we don't out-flank it, we'll never—"_

_The young officer slowly turned his head and looked at Booth with a blank, slack-jawed expression, the kind that gave meaning to the term 'a thousand yard stare.'_

_"We've gotta move the company," Booth told him again. Dawar opened his mouth to speak, but after several precious seconds, no words ever came out. Booth took a long, deep breath and then suddenly smacked the lieutenant in the chest with the back of his hand. _

_"Ashraf—snap out of it, man! These boys need you. We've gotta move outta here before that insurgent element tears us apart." Dawar blinked and nodded, shifting his weight from one hip to the other as the knelt in the sand, his shoulder pressed against the sun-baked clay wall. "Ashraf!" Booth growled, grabbing the young lieutenant's shoulder and shaking him, but still the young man gave no indication of being capable of any movement other than a quiet shiver, or, more importantly, of being able to communicate with his men. _

_"Shit," Booth whispered under his breath. _Holy Mary, sweet and blessed mother of God, _he murmured, crossing himself mentally. _Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death...which may be imminent if he doesn't get his shit together and move. Damn it— _He brought his thumb and forefinger to his lips and whistled to get the attention of the dozen nearest ANA troops. As soon as they swiveled their heads in his direction, he grabbed the lieutenant by the strap of his backpack and yanked the young man to his feet. _

_"Ze mā sara rāzāh!" Booth called out in broken Pashto to the Afghan soldiers. _

_"Follow me!" _

"The insurgent forces fell back across the intersection adjacent to the mosque. ODA commanding officer Captain Robinson then directed Sergeant Major Booth to assault forward. Sergeant Major Booth rushed forward into the insurgent forces' assault to physically take control of his lead ANA elements who desired to maintain their defensive positions and feared crossing the mined intersection that had enemy fire oriented down the two roads."

Although Brennan often considered one of her many strengths to be her ability to process and analyze information conveyed to her in an auditory manner, as the general continued to speak, she couldn't help but start to feel a certain de-sensitivity emerge the longer he talked. _God, Booth_—_what did you do?_

"Sergeant Major Booth's fearlessness inspired his ANA Company to disregard their own personal safety and follow him into the insurgent forces' stronghold without the assistance of an interpreter. Sergeant Major Booth so aggressively maneuvered through the enemy stronghold that insurgent fighters abandoned their positions and dispersed into small bands of individual fighters. The ANA struggled to maintain Sergeant Major Booth's pace through the fight. Sergeant Major Booth first cleared the Red Cross clinic using only rifles since he recognized it may have contained civilians being used as human shields by the insurgent forces."

Brennan had no doubt, as the general continued to regale the crowd with the story of Booth's gallantry, that every word of the citation was, in fact, true. _His respect for innocent life is profound, _she told herself. She remembered how her partner had once jumped into a swimming pool to save the life of a young boy whom the Gormogon killer had pulled into the pool with him in order to escape Booth's pursuit. _Booth would do anything to save what he views as an innocent life, _she thought. _He's done it with the FBI and, clearly, he did it over there in Afghanistan when he and his soldiers went through that clinic with less than the full complement of lethal weaponry in order to ensure that no innocent persons were injured in the process. But, even still, oh, God_—_Booth...if this is true...it means you didn't keep your promise. Remember? I asked you not to be a hero over there, and it seems that not only did you not do that...it's almost like you went above and beyond the call of duty just to prove my words wrong. Damn it, Booth__—_

"Inside the clinic, Sergeant Major Booth found bloody bandages, bloody clothing with bullet size holes, ammunition and IED components that had been left behind. Sergeant Major Booth continued to move towards the source of gunfire. Approximately 15 insurgent fighters attempted to regroup around several structures, including a mosque approximately 200 meters to the north of the Red Cross clinic. Sergeant Major Booth's constant pursuit and pressure kept the insurgent forces from reorganizing their platoon. Despite having pursued the enemy 100 meters past the Red Cross clinic under fire, Sergeant Major Booth continued his relentless assault an additional 200 meters against the repositioning insurgent forces. The ANA, spurred on by Sergeant Major Booth's undaunted drive towards the enemy, hurled themselves against the enemy in an apparent effort to match their mentor's bravery and aggression."

Booth heard the general's voice, but his mind was no longer grasping the words of the citation. He glanced down at his partner, seated at their table just thirty feet away in front of him, and he felt his breath catch and a wave of nausea sweep over him as he saw the expression on her face. _Oh, damn it_—_not now. Please, Bones, _he begged her silently with his eyes. _It's not as bad as it sounds_—_I swear. I mean, it was, but, shit_—_don't do this. It's not your fault. It's not your fault I went there, and it sure as hell isn't your fault that I did what I did. I made the decision to go__—me, not you—and you know that, once I was there, I had to do my best to fulfill my duty to the men I was serving with, which in this case meant not just other American soldiers and marines but also the Afghan men I was training. You know that. You know I couldn't have lived with myself if I didn't do my best to bring every one of those men back with me each night. So, please, Bones, whatever you're thinking over there, just stop it—_

"Facing this united front of almost 70 ANA led up to this point by one Special Forces soldier, the insurgent fighters began to run from their alternate positions leaving behind a machine gun, ammunition and radios. With the intersection and surrounding area secure, Sergeant Major Booth rapidly reorganized his ANA to security positions facilitating the EOD clearance of the bazaar and checkpoint construction. As Captain Robinson was directing the operations in the bazaar, an IED detonated killing two Marines and wounding three other Marines as well as their Afghan interpreter. Hearing the explosion and the situation report over the radio, Sergeant Major Booth rapidly identified that the continued enemy contact would jeopardize the incoming Medical Evacuation (MEDEVAC) aircraft."

"_Men down!" Booth remembered hearing his captain say, his voice crackling over the radio. "This is Timber Five, over." He could hear the ragged, rising pitch of Captain Robinson's deep voice and he knew something very, very bad had happened. "I've got men down, over. IED just went off on the northeast quadrant of the Ghuncha Gul bazaar, approximate location Tango-Seven, over. Tango-Seven. Two known KIA, four WIA. I need immediate MEDEVAC to Tango-Seven. Please acknowledge, somebody, over." _

_Booth felt the blood roaring in his ears as he looked around him, his mouth hanging open as he quickly took inventory of the situation around him. He knew the insurgents were in partial retreat, but there were still plenty of them in close enough proximity to threaten the safe evacuation of the four wounded men. He'd seen enough men wounded by IEDs that he knew some or all of these four men could be wounded gravely enough that minutes could spell the difference between survival and bleeding out in the sand. He'd also seen helicopters taken down by small-arms fire of the kind that had been raining down on the ANA company for the last forty-five minutes. He knew what he had to do._

"Knowing his Commanding Officer was physically managing a mass casualty situation and that approximately 15 insurgent fighters were still within RPG and small arms range of the bazaar, Sergeant Major Booth voluntarily resumed his assault north fully knowing he was moving beyond the range of supporting fire or contact with adjacent friendly units. Sergeant Major Booth again inspired his ANA Company, members of which were shaken by the IED explosion in the bazaar, to continue the pursuit of the enemy despite their massive casualties. Sergeant Major Booth continued to fight canal by canal, across open fields for an additional fifteen hundred meters north of the intersection, pushing insurgent forces fighters out of small arms and RPG range from the helicopter landing zone."

"_Come on!" he shouted to his men, who had begun to hunker down behind the protective defilade offered by the steep slope of the second canal. _

_He whistled loudly and, unable to remember how to say what he wanted to in the broken, pidgin form of Pashto he'd been taught at Fort Bragg, he pointed at a group of twenty of them, made a horizontal circle in their air with his finger, pointed his thumb back at himself, and then gestured with his arm in the direction of the next canal. Some of the ANA men looked at each other with brows raised and eyes wide._

"_Come on, let's go, motherfuckers," Booth whispered under his breath, not that any of them would have understood him, never mind been able to hear him, over the incessant crackle of automatic weapons fire and the loud chatter of a nearby, belt-fed machine gun. "Let's go, boys!"_

"_Come on!" he shouted again as he double-checked to ensure he had a full magazine loaded, then clambered up the sloping wall of the canal. "Hooooah!"_

"This put Sergeant Major Booth, as the sole ANA mentor, nearly two kilometers from the nearest friendly unit. As insurgent fighters attempted to regroup, they called in supporting fires from a heavy-caliber crew-served weapon from a nearby insurgent checkpoint."

_Two kilometers from the nearest friendly unit? _Brennan stared into her champagne flute as she felt a pounding in her head that had made it's presence known at the beginning of the general's speech reassert it's presence with a painful vengeance. Not able to meet Booth's gaze, she had to consciously keep herself from biting her lip or allowing any other clear sign on her face of her distress to manifest itself, lest she embarrass Booth—something she never wanted to do. _God, you ran straight into it, didn't you? That's what it really comes down to, doesn't it? Once you strip away all the names and details, God, Booth_—_what did you do...go out and look for trouble? You just can't help it, can you? No, despite your promise to me, you couldn't just do your job and come home, could you, Booth? You always have to be a fucking hero._

"Due to the intensity of the enemy contact, Sergeant Major Booth could've pulled back several times throughout the fight, but he maintained his position to allow for the evacuation of the three critically wounded Marines and their Afghan civilian interpreter. Sergeant Major Booth's unwavering courage and absence of self preservation inspired the ANA to perform their own feats of valor in the face of a determined and prepared enemy. Additionally, Sergeant Major Booth's aggressiveness and initiative prevented the damage or loss of three rotary wing aircraft, allowed for the evacuation of the three wounded Marines and their interpreter, prevented further casualties, and resulted in the complete rout of a combat-hardened enemy."

The whole experience was such a blur that, no matter how hard Booth tried to remember individual details, he couldn't quite tease them all out of the heart-pounding, dizzying memory of that two-hour period. But, he _always _remembered the tally. In this case, of the sixty-nine men in the ANA company he'd been seconded to, they had suffered only nine casualties, including three dead.

_One of the casualties was the young lieutenant, Dawar, who'd taken a large-caliber machine gun round to the lower leg. Booth had been five paces in front of him when Dawar had been hit, and had stopped his own advance, turned around and found the young lieutenant lying face-down in the muddy canal. He slid down the dusty slope of the canal and reached out, pulling Dawar up by his backpack's grab handle and dragging him up the side of the canal. Booth barked at one of the young ANA men to help the lieutenant so Booth could rejoin and rejuvenate the faltering advance. The young ANA soldier stared at him dumbly for a moment. Booth narrowed his eyes and, recalling one of the few phrases he could readily rattle off, pointed at the lieutenant and growled in Pashto, surprising the soldier, who quickly complied. _

"_We leave no man behind," he'd told him._

"His courageous actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military heroism and reflect distinct credit upon himself, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force - Afghanistan, the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command - Afghanistan, and the United States Army."

Brennan watched intently as the general accepted the Silver Star medal from the Afghan minister, who held the presentation box and watched gratefully and silently as the medal was pinned on Booth's jacket lapel next to this other decorations. For the first time in several moments, her eyes met Booth's. Instantly, they seemed to try to convey something to her, but Brennan wasn't certain as to what Booth was trying to tell her. However, she _did _note the straight-lipped, almost sad expression on his face. _I figured he'd be happier about this, _she admitted silently. _I really want to throw up right now, Booth, but it's not like you know that. I would've supposed that you would be happier to be recognized like this for your skill and bravery as a soldier. _

She forced a smile as the general stepped away, leaving Booth standing somewhat alone, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down as he looked ahead uncomfortably amid the loud applause that sounded from the assembled crowd. _Oh, __Booth—_

He watched her eyes and wanted nothing more than to walk off that stage to go to her in that moment. _Oh, __Bones_—

After a few seconds, the loud applause faded. Booth then turned, saluted General McKee, who dismissed him with a return salute and a reassuring smile. Booth took a deep breath and walked off the stage, nearly jogging down the steps at the side of the stage as he made his way back to where his partner sat. As he came around her side of their table, Brennan stood up and greeted him with a warm kiss on the cheek. He snaked his arm around her waist, turned his head and placed a soft, quick kiss on her lips.

"Hey, are you okay?" he whispered, lifting his brows expectantly. "Nothing's wrong, is it?"

She smiled sweetly and said, "No, of course not." Reaching out, she brushed a non-existent piece of lint off of the shoulder of his dress uniform.

"You sure?" Booth asked, the hesitation clear in his voice.

"Positive," she said with a firm nod. "I'm very proud of you, Booth."

He nodded and they kissed again, his lips holding her lower lip between his for the briefest second before pulling away.

"Okay," Booth said with a grin as he breathed a bit easier in that moment. _Maybe I was just reading into things too much, after all. God, she's great_—.

"Sergeant Major!" a voice called out from behind them.

Nodding in the direction from which the voice had come, she smiled and said, "I think you're being paged."

With a sheepish grin, Booth nodded and turned around to face the fresh crush of well-wishers leaving Brennan to her own devices.

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><p><strong>-TBC-<strong>

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><p><strong>AN2**: This is the first of five parts in this story. Thanks for reading, and if you're so inclined, we always love to hear reader responses. Again, we hope you've enjoyed...and stay tuned as there's lots more to come...~


	2. Part II: Another Round of Hard Truths

**Seeing the Monuments**

**By**: Lesera128 & _dharmamonkey_

**Rated**: M

**Disclaimer**: We still don't own anything...and it's still pretty obvious that we don't—at least to us. And, yes, our permanent mailing address has now been changed to the sandbox—you know which one.

**Summary**: Booth is honored for valor in Afghanistan at a formal banquet, Brennan attends, guilt rears its ugly head, and Booth has to resort to drastic measures in the limo on their ride home to get rid of Brennan's melancholy. Sequel to "When She Ran Away." Set during early season 6. Very AU, and very, very M.

**A/N**: This story is a sequel to "When She Ran Away." It's set approximately two weeks after the conclusion of that story. It was inspired, in part, by the opening ten minutes of the 1987 movie "No Way Out." Similarities between the opening scenes of that movie and this fic are most likely deliberate.~

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><p><strong>Part II: Another Round of Hard Truths<strong>

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><p>Though Brennan had initially intended to stay by Booth's side as he wound his way through the crowd, accepting congratulations from what seemed like wave after wave of generals, colonels, majors, and captains in virtually identical formal blue dress uniforms—with a few tuxedo-clad civilians sprinkled in for good measure—it soon became apparent that it would be highly unrealistic for Brennan to actually achieve such an objective. While she made a valiant effort to stay as close to Booth as possible, always within eye sight so that every minute or two when Booth guilty snuck a quick glance away from whatever person with whom he happened to be speaking to catch Brennan's eye, at some point, after listening to one especially long-winded congratulations morph into a detailed discussion of logistical and civil affairs challenges in a particular district along the route between Qūryah and Marjeh—which Booth had no real choice but to participate in—Brennan eventually slipped away. She hadn't walked very far when a familiar voice called out to her.<p>

"Dr. Brennan!"

She looked up and was greeted by the lazy grin of Booth's detachment commander, Captain Robinson. "Captain," she said, returning his smile with one of her own. After the events of the past hour, she hardly felt like smiling, but she knew she had to project an amiable disposition for the benefit of her partner.

"So, how was your dinner?" Robinson asked.

Nodding at him, Brennan replied, "The hotel was able to accommodate my request for a vegetarian dinner, and so my pasta alfredo actually ended up being more fresh and appetizing then the Chicken Cordon Bleu and wild rice that Booth and the others at my table were served. However, that's usually the case since establishments such as this usually make such meals only when requested instead of letting the pre-prepared plates remain warm under heating lamps for an undetermined amount of time before the banquet." She stopped when she saw Robinson give her a blank look and so she merely shrugged her shoulders before she added, "In my past experience, it's generally a good rule to always order vegetarian or kosher meal alternatives at such functions like this one...or even on airplanes. The quality is inevitably higher when compared with the rest of the food that everyone else is served."

"Ahhh," Robinson said, a look of comprehension dawning on his face. "Now, that part I can remember. Thanks for the tip."

"You're quite welcome," Brennan nodded, now at a loss for how to quickly end their impromptu conversation and continue on her way unmolested.

"So," Robinson said. "You're right about the food tonight. My chicken was a bit rubbery, now that I think about it. But, after the chow we ate when we were deployed, this stuff is practically gourmet."

"I've assisted in a number of military operations over the years where I've had the chance to sample such cuisine," Brennan responded as she made a face. "I must concur that, while I've no doubt not experienced the culinary delights of the U.S. Army for as long a span as you and Booth have, I don't relish the idea of having to rely on that as my only source of sustenance for long periods of time."

"Well," Robinson shrugged. "You're probably right. But, when you're on the move like we were for as long as we were, and sometimes you weren't certain when you'd have a chance for a hot meal, you get used to eating when you can...and being grateful for it. I mean, it sure beats MREs. Those are just downright nasty. Nasty! Why, I remember this one time—"

Brennan stood there for a couple of minutes, letting Captain Robinson, who had clearly enjoyed a few drinks by that point in the evening, regale her with amusing stories of what life had been like for Booth's unit during their time in Afghanistan. Every so often, he would make a comment about some of Booth's off-duty antics that caught her attention, but for the most part, she simply wished that Robinson would stop talking. A large part of her really didn't want to hear any more details of her partner's most recent stint in the Army. Each new piece of information she heard merely reminded Brennan all over again of the pain she felt when she thought of the seven long months of danger to which her rejection of Booth had consigned him. While some of the stories were mildly interesting, because they offered a view of a side of Booth that she would otherwise never have had the chance to see, it was still a lot of data for her to process on an evening where she'd already had to deal with a lot of new information. However, lest she be considered as rude and embarrassment to her partner, Brennan had no choice as she stood, listened, smiled, and offered an encouraging "_uh-huh_" and "_of course_" here and there to ensure the talkative captain believed her to be completely enthralled and hanging on each word he said.

"—and so the staff sergeant yells back, 'Hey, Amp!' and then Booth goes—"

"Wait—what?" Brennan asked, a slightly confused look on her face, as the strange name suddenly caught her full attention. "Perhaps I've missed something, and, if so, please forgive me, but why did the staff sergeant call Booth 'Amp'...?"

"Oh," Robinson laughed with a wave of his hand. "Now, _that's _a good story. I'm surprised he didn't tell you that one as soon as he got back. He must've still been a bit sore over it, huh? Anyway, 'Amp' is a nickname that Booth picked up maybe five or six months into our rotation."

"And, what prompted the bequest of such a sobriquet?" Brennan asked.

Robinson stared at her for a few seconds, blinked, and after a minute's delay in mental processing, he asked, "You mean, how did Booth get the nickname?"

Brennan merely nodded in response.

"Oh," Robinson said, smiling as he was quite pleased with himself at having deciphered the strange communication skills of Booth's partner for himself. "Well, that's because, after he got nicked in that IED explosion, he had this ringing in his ears for over...well, I'm not certain how long, but it was a while...must've been at least a week, and he'd been talking really loud. So, some of the guys started to call him 'Amp' because it sounded like every word he said was being run through a big amplifier."

_Ringing in his ears for a week? _Brennan said, feeling the color drain from her cheeks at the words. She thought back to the first night she and Booth came together after their return from overseas and the shock she felt at seeing the angry red scar on his chest. His words rang in her ears as she recalled his explanation of the events.

_She reached out and placed her fingers lightly below the scar without actually touching it._

_"This," Brennan said softly. "This...it's—it's my fault it happened to you. I...I-I did this."_

_"No, Bones," Booth told her gently. "You didn't do that."_

_Nodding, she replied, "Yes, yes I did, Booth."_

_"No," Booth repeated. "That, Bones," he explained with a slow nod. "That was done by a Taliban insurgent who got himself blown up by misrigging his own sub-par fucked-up IED in Qūryah and caused a piece of shrapnel to pierce my Kevlar body armor, Bones." He stopped, seeing her doubt still present, and then, so there would be no mistake, said firmly, "Him. Not you, Bones. Not you." Shaking his head, Booth said, "But, it's okay, Bones. I promise. Really...it looks much worse than it actually was—I didn't even get more than 24 hours of recup time because the docs said it was just a scratch."_

_"I can see how the skin has started to heal, Booth," Brennan said with a slow and sad shake of her head. "While I don't think you're outright being deceptive in your description of the events that transpired to cause this wound, I do think you are trying to minimize the extent of your injury."_

Listening to the captain's explanation of how Booth had come to have the nickname—_Amp_—Brennan knew that, indeed, her partner had downplayed the extent to which the IED explosion had affected him.

_I knew it, _she thought. _I knew I should've listened to what my instincts were telling me. Damn it...damn it all to hell_—

She felt another wave of nausea pass through her as she realized that exposure to a shockwave and subsequent tinnitus lasting more than a week left no doubt, from scientific or medical standpoint, that Booth had suffered a significant concussion injury in the IED explosion. If, in fact, he'd actually been diagnosed with such a closed-head injury—in addition to the serious laceration and shrapnel injury that he received in the same incident—then he'd misled her about the impact of the incident. On the other hand, if the Army physicians or medics did not make the connection between Booth's tinnitus and his exposure to the IED explosion, then that reflected grimly on the quality of medical care which had been available to him in the military. In either case, Brennan felt physically ill at the thought—firstly, that these dangers were visited upon him as a result of her actions, and secondly, that Booth's apparent unwillingness to be forthcoming about these events meant that what she knew was, in fact, simply the tip of the metaphorical iceberg. And, as Brennan began to feel a familiar sense of overwhelming panic wash over her at the thought of how much she didn't know and couldn't control, she knew couldn't take it anymore—she had to get away.

Pasting another fake smile on her face—an action that was beginning to become a bit too habitual for Brennan's tastes—she nodded and preemptively cut off Robinson before he could launch into another five minute slew of information that Brennan was afraid to hear him speak, lest he tell her yet _another _thing about Booth's most recent stint in the Army, of which she was still unaware. "It was lovely speaking to you again, Captain Robinson," she said evenly as she moved her clutch from her right hand to her left and shook his hand. "It was a pleasure meeting you. Best of luck to you on your new assignment here in Washington."

"The pleasure's all mine, Dr. Brennan," Robinson replied awkwardly, pumping her hand enthusiastically. "Enjoy the rest of your evening," he called after her as she turned away.

Taking a deep breath that she foolishly believed might be indicative of some of the relief she'd hoped to feel once she escaped from Robinson, Brennan knew any such relief was fleeting at best. Her eyes scanning the banquet room, she knew that since she couldn't go through with her usual first choice of action when she found herself faced with such situations—a hasty retreat as she exited the metaphorical stage left—her eyes narrowed a bit when she focused on another option. Seeing a steady flow of officers and dignitaries coming to and from the reception area where a cash bar stood, Brennan nodded at herself as she took a step towards the throng of movement. _I think I could do with a drink, _she told herself morosely as she paused at the base of the steps on the edge of the reception area. _A very strong and very alcoholic libation_—_perhaps two._

Standing there in a three thousand dollar designer dress, heels that she'd had dyed to match, and clutching her royal blue handbag with both hands so that she wouldn't start shaking, Brennan knew that now was not the time or place to lose it. She was surrounded by some of the highest ranking members of the U.S. State Department, Department of Defense, U.S. Army, and foreign dignitaries. More importantly, this night wasn't about her. She was there for one reason, and one reason only—to support Booth. However, as the words of the citation rang in her ears, she felt as if she were slowly crumbling from the inside out as she recalled each descriptive image in her mind.

_Sergeant Major Booth rushed forward into the insurgent forces' assault to physically take control of his lead ANA elements_...

Blinking several times, Brennan knew that if she didn't start to move, she would cry out. Placing one foot ahead of another, she didn't bother to so much as glance at Booth—who had somehow knowingly materialized from the swell of the talkative crowd—from where he stood a few feet away from her chatting with an officer who wore the rank of a three-star general. Instead, she concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other as she walked out of the throng of schmoozing dignitaries and headed for the bar even as the words of Booth's citation narrative still echoed in her head with each step she took.

_Sergeant Major Booth voluntarily resumed his assault north fully knowing he was moving beyond the range of supporting fire or contact with adjacent friendly units_...

"I need a drink," Brennan muttered to herself as she walked up to the bar, quickly made eye contact with one of the tuxedoed bartenders, took a twenty-dollar bill out of her clutch, and placed it in front of the bartender once he'd appeared in front of her. "A double bourbon, please," she said with a firm nod. "Neat. And, you can keep the change as long as you get that drink back here in sixty seconds or less."

The bartender gave her a knowing look, swept the bill off the bar top, and went to pour her requested drink.

_...follow him into the insurgent forces' stronghold without the assistance of an interpreter..._

"I need a drink," Brennan muttered again. "I _definitely _need a drink."

A moment or two later, the very helpful bartender returned and placed a crystal tumbler of cut glass in front of her. It was filled with about three inches of dark amber liquid. Nodding her thanks, she wrapped her palm around the curve of the glass. She blinked at it several times before she lifted it to her mouth and swallowed a large gulp. The sharp bite of the sweet Kentucky blended spirits burned the back of her throat as the pungent vapors filled her nostrils. For a few seconds, she felt her eyes water as she lowered the glass. The warm liquid cascaded down the back of her throat, and she eventually felt the mild sting of the alcohol hitting her stomach. She was thankful that she'd eaten the caesar salad and vegetarian pasta alfredo that she'd ordered earlier so that there'd be less chance that she'd throw up the massive amount of alcohol she was about to drink. Since her stomach was relatively full when she began to drink, Brennan knew that the alcohol wouldn't faze her quite as quickly as it normally would, and she considered herself to have a fairly high tolerance for alcohol when compared with most people. However, desperately wanting to feel a bit numb as she tried to keep her brain from processing the swirl of words that she'd heard in the recitation of Booth's citation narrative, she knew that having a drink was the only way she'd make it out of the hotel banquet hall without embarrassing both herself and Booth—and, so...she drank.

_I will __not__ cry, _she told herself vehemently as she felt the flow of the amber liquid creep into her bloodstream and begin to chip away at her tentative hold on her inhibitions. It was only by a purely stubborn declaration that Brennan knew she was keeping the tears she felt swelling in her from making themselves known in her physical person. _I won't do it_—_not here, not now. __I won't do it. I just won't do it._

Looking at her what remained in her half-filled glass, Brennan again quickly raised it to her lips, made a face as she held her breath so the fumes wouldn't overwhelm her again, and quickly swallowed what remained of the drink in a few gulps. Setting the now-empty glass down on top of the bar with a distinctly audible _clink_, she made another face as she swallowed a small hiccup and realized that the burning taste of the bourbon still lingered on her tongue. Knowing it would take several minutes before she felt any of the effects of the alcohol in her system, Brennan decided it was better to be safe than sorry. In order to make certain that she was prepared, just in case the overwhelming sense of panic and fear she'd felt manifest itself earlier during the award presentation reared their respective heads again. she reached into her clutch and withdrew another twenty-dollar bill.

Making eye contact with the same bartender who'd initially served her, Brennan pushed the money in his direction as she said, "Another round, if you please—same as before."

The bartender stared at her for only the briefest of moments before he nodded slowly with an empathetic look in his eye and disappeared. In even less time than it had taken him to pour the first drink, the bartender returned and set a fresh glass in front of Brennan. She smiled her thanks at him, reached for the glass, and made another face as she started to sip it.

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><p>Eventually, noticing that Brennan had disappeared and that he'd been unable to spot her—despite a fairly concentrated effort to find her—Booth eventually made his polite excuses, thanked those individuals who had given him their well-wishes, and began to look in earnest for his date. His brow furrowed in concern, and he was beginning to wonder what had happened to her when a somewhat familiar voice suddenly interrupted him.<p>

"If you're looking for your girl, she headed towards the bar about fifteen minutes ago."

A wry smile played on the edge of General David McKeen's lips as he considered the younger man. Booth, when he turned and saw that the four-star general who had presented his medal earlier in the evening was sitting by himself in a partially-recessed alcove, immediately snapped to attention. McKeen quickly waved him off and said, "At ease, Sergeant Major—at ease."

"Yes, sir," Booth replied as his shoulders hunched a bit at the older man's words. He shrugged as he spoke again. "Thank you, sir."

"Your girl," the general continued as he vaguely gestured with his pointer finger in the direction of Booth's person. "The tall brunette knockout in that killer blue dress—that was her, right?"

Slowly—even though Booth knew she'd hate it if anyone had ever used those exact words to describe their relationship, he nodded in response, trying to maintain a sense of decorum in front of one of the U.S. Army's half-dozen highest-ranking officers, but unable to suppress his smile. "Yes, sir," he grinned. "That's her."

"She's gorgeous, that one. And special—very special, I think," McKeen said thoughtfully. Narrowing his eye, he nodded at Booth as he said, "I didn't notice a ring. I presume you two aren't married?"

"Not yet, sir," Booth said truthfully.

The older man blinked at Booth several times before he slowly shook his head. "While I know you're a brave man given the citation I read a short time ago, Sergeant Major, I do hope you won't take offense when I say I'm not sure how smart you are if you let a stunning creature like that slip through your fingers," McKeen observed. "I've been around the block enough times to know when a man should do whatever he needs to do to lock down a woman like that because—well, because that one that you've got there? She's a keeper—there's just no two ways about it."

Booth met the general's knowing eyes for a moment and then slowly nodded in agreement. "No, sir, there's not," Booth agreed quite honestly.

The general watched Booth for a moment or two before he spoke again, his deep voice cutting through the silence that had fallen between them. "I've been watching you two all night," McKeen suddenly confessed. "You see, it's a been a bit tedious since I lost my Beth last year. I still have to go to these damn things—no offense intended, of course—but they just drag on so damn long. And, anyway, it was easier to wait these things out when I had a regular date, but since my wife passed, I try to make the time go a bit faster—and am occasionally amused by—with the process of people-watching. And, I must say, Sergeant Major, I've gotten a real kick out of watching the two of you this evening." He stopped, smiled, and then inquired, "How long have you been together?"

Booth hesitated. He thought about saying that they'd officially been together as a couple for just a little over a month, i.e., the entire time since he'd been back in D.C. from his deployment in Afghanistan. But, somehow, such a response was somewhat unsettling to Booth as he thought of the many years in which they'd been (to quote Angela Montenegro, as related to him by Brennan), in a relationship for years—they just hadn't started having sex until a month ago. Thus, Booth knew it felt right when he replied, "A little over six years."

McKeen's brow furrowed further as he shook his head again and asked in obvious confusion, "Six years?"

"Yes, sir," Booth nodded. "Slightly more than that to be completely accurate."

Sighing slightly, McKeen looked up at Booth and said, "That's a long time to take to lock down a beautiful woman like that."

"Yes, sir," Booth reluctantly agreed. "But, it's really not from lack of trying on my part." The words were suddenly out of his mouth before he'd even realized what he said. _At least, not entirely from lack of trying on my part_, he amended silently.

At this, McKeen suddenly smiled as his blue eyes began to twinkle. "Well, maybe you need to try a little harder, Sergeant Major. Maybe you need to try a little harder."

Considering his words, Booth slowly nodded. "As you say, sir."

Pointing in the direction of the bar, McKeen chuckled as he said, "Go get your girl, Sergeant Major. Go get your girl."

With a easy smile of his own, followed by a quick salute, Booth took McKeen's words as a dismissal as he spun on his heels and walked in the direction the general had indicated. A smile hung on his lips as he contemplated how glad he was when he heard someone refer to Brennan as 'his.' It was still a novel concept, and one that made him quite happy. However, that happiness was short-lived when he entered the bar and immediately saw Brennan leaning against it, cradling a drink. He could simply tell from her body language—the limp, casual angle with which her slender fingers held the glass, the way she seemed to be bracing herself against the dark cherry wood of the bar, and the uncharacteristic slouch to her normally proud posture—that _something _was wrong, and he knew it as soon as he saw her. Then, realizing that his earlier fear of Brennan not having handled the specific details of his citation narrative as well as he'd actually been more justified than he'd first believed, Booth knew he was in trouble.

_I knew it_, he thought, chastising himself in his mind. _I knew she was lying when she said she was okay and then kissed me and sent me on my merry way after I got that friggin' medal. Damn it, Bones_. Walking up to her, Booth could sense the waves of melancholy radiating off of her. _Awww, damn it._

Brennan's back was still to him when he came up and placed a light hand on her bare shoulder. "Bones?"

Booth felt her tense a bit as he touched her. It was only for the briefest of seconds when her shoulders tightened. But, as soon as he spoke, Brennan immediately relaxed, and he hoped that the reason that she'd had such a reaction stemmed from the fact that he'd caught her off-guard. Slowly turning around, Booth thought he saw a flash of _something_ in Brennan's eyes before they radiated a happiness as she smiled at him.

"It's just me," he said quietly. _Hmmm_..._maybe I was wrong. Maybe I just startled her?_

"I know that," she said slowly, almost as if she were testing each word on her tongue as she spoke. "Although I have no quantifiable proof to support my claim, I'm fairly certain I'd know your touch anywhere, Booth." Eventually, seemingly pleased with what she'd said, Brennan nodded and smiled again as she added, "I'm happy to see you."

"Are you?" Booth said. "Really and truly?"

Nodding, Brennan immediately replied, "Of course."

"Ahhh," Booth said with a small nod and a flash of his eyebrows. "I thought maybe when you disappeared that you got too stunned by the brilliance of my star power."

Brennan thought about making a standard-pat response about literally interpreting Booth's comment about him being a star, but ultimately decided against such an action. While the bourbon she'd consumed had finally started to dull her senses enough so that she no longer felt like she was a quivering mass of emotional wreckage that might crack in front of everyone in a very public emotional breakdown, she knew she had no excess energy to spare. Instead, she smiled again and merely shook her head.

"Not at all. I was just thirsty and wanted a drink," Brennan told him.

Booth looked at her for several seconds, staring deeply into her eyes before he nodded at her and asked, "Really?"

"Really," she confirmed, trying to maintain as positive a tone of voice as she could manage in that moment. "As a matter of fact, since I know that you haven't had more than two sips of champagne since we got here—and you only had those because you _had _to—"

"Well," Booth said, as he interrupted her. "I sorta needed to keep a straight head tonight, Bones. It wasn't really a time to go and get shitfaced." _Even though, by the time I finished listening to that whole thing, never mind seeing the look on your face when it was done, I sure as hell needed a strong one_—_maybe a couple, actually__. _"You know," he said, his voice dropping to a mere whisper. "I had to keep my stuff together while I hobnobbed with the hoity-toits and all the general staff officers, DOD types, the Afghan Minister of Defense—"

"I know that," Brennan said, just a little too quickly. "But, now that it's almost over, why don't you let me buy you a drink—as a way for me to say 'congratulations?'"

Shaking his head slowly, Booth said, "You don't have to do that, Bones." _Because there's nothing to congratulate me about, _he thought. _I'd give this medal, and all the rest of them, back to the Army in a heartbeat if I could only get rid of that haunted look that I saw on your face earlier—_

"I know," she replied as she reached into her clutch once more, withdrew another twenty-dollar bill, and signaled to her favorite bartender. "But, I want to."

"Ma'am?" the bartender asked as he approached her and allowed his verbal greeting to be followed with a nod of his head. "Another round?"

Standing behind her, Booth arched an eyebrow at the bartender's words, but didn't make a sound. _Another__ round? Damn, Bones_—_how long have you been here, huh?_

"No, thank you," she said with a shake of her head, oblivious to the slight tensing of Booth's form that occurred out of sight since he stood slightly behind her when she was facing the bar. Tilting her head at the bartender, Brennan smiled prettily and said, "I'm fine for now. Instead of purchasing another drink for myself, I'd like to buy a drink for the handsome soldier that's standing next to me, in celebration of the fact that he was just awarded the Silver Star this evening."

The bartender looked up at Booth and gave a nod of acknowledgement to him at Brennan's words. "Congratulations, sir."

"Thank you," Booth said for what seemed like the thousandth time that evening and as he noticed Brennan was swaying so ever so slightly before she braced herself against the bar. If it had been anyone else they would've missed the movement, but Booth's perceptive eye caught the minute detail in an instant.

"So, what can I get you, sir?" the bartender asked when Brennan handed the money to him. "What's your pleasure?"

Booth's eyes drifted to Brennan, and she smiled back at him in encouragement. "Go ahead. Get whatever you want," she told him.

Taking a moment to scan the row of bottles that stood visible behind the bartender, at last, Booth nodded at the man. "Do you have Oban?" he finally asked. The bartender smiled and nodded in response, appreciating when he found a customer who knew his Scotch whiskies. "I'll have an Oban, neat."

"Right away, sir," the bartender said before he quietly disappeared.

"Bones?" Booth asked as he wrapped an arm around her once they were alone.

"Yes, Booth?"

"You sure you're okay?" he asked her again.

Before Brennan had a chance to answer, the bartender returned and set a cut-glass high top tumbler in front of Booth. He nodded and said, "Oban, neat."

Glancing at the generous portion of single-malt that had been free-poured into the glass, Booth shook his head slightly as he said, "But, I only ordered a single."

His smile widening a bit, the bartender nodded as he said, "Consider the second one on the house...for the man of the hour, if you will."

Using his free hand to grab the glass, Booth gestured with it before he lifted it to his lips and said, "Thanks."

"Don't mention it, sir," the bartender replied before he disappeared once more. "It's my pleasure."

Taking a small sip of the whisky, Booth glanced over at his partner, then took a second, longer sip. "You sure you're okay?" he asked her, reaching his hand over and placing it over hers, threading his fingers between hers that rested, slightly splayed, on the cool, varnished surface of the bar once he'd set down the glass on the bar top. "You scared me a little, walking off like that," he said quietly, leaning into her and kissing her gently on the forehead.

"_I _scared _you_?" she replied, turning to look at her partner. "After all that we heard tonight, I find it exceedingly difficult to believe that anything I've ever done could actually frighten you, Booth." She paused and took a breath before she tilted her head at him and added, "Remember, I think it's fairly safe to say that we both know that you're not the type of man who's ever scared easily, Booth."

At her words, Booth sighed, lifted his glass from the top of the bar, took another long draw on his whisky, and then shrugged as he considered his response. After a few seconds, he spoke, conceding her points with a bit of lightheartedness that he hoped might catch fire and spread to Brennan's mood—if such a thing were possible on such a night as this was turning out to be. "Well," he said with a vague smirk. "Okay—you're right. I wasn't really scared, but I was slightly concerned because I didn't know where you went." Raking her long, curvy, sapphire-sheathed figure with his eyes, he grinned. "I figured, you know, that maybe you found a better-looking, more charming, and better-dressed soldier to go home with tonight and that you'd have your way with him instead of poor ol' me."

"Hmmmm," Brennan said with a wry smile, as she nodded at him. Her eyes, slightly glazed over from the bourbon she'd been drinking, danced with a small amount of mirth. For a moment, as she stared into the deep brown irises of her partner, she was able to lose herself for just a little bit as she flirted with him. "I suppose it's just your good luck that I never found a better-looking, more charming and better-dressed soldier during the course of my mingling this evening then, isn't it?"

"Well," Booth replied, snaking his arm around her waist and pulling her close. He pressed his lips softly against her temple, breathing in the smell of her as he pulled his lips away. "I _am_ a pretty lucky guy," he whispered, brushing his lips against her ear. "Of that, there's no doubt." He took another whiff of her scent, kissed her ear, then moved away a little, and brought his scotch whisky once more to his mouth. "Or, maybe, it's just because I _am _the best looking, most charming, best-dressed soldier here tonight," he quipped, smiling into his glass as he looked over to gauge Brennan's response.

And, in that moment, just as if he'd burst both of their bubbles with his subtle attempt at a small joke, something snapped. The mirth instantly disappeared from Brennan's eyes—unbeknownst to Booth simply because he'd identified himself as a solider—and she took a few seconds longer than usual to respond. At last, she nodded at him as she managed to cobble together a rather weak response. "Maybe," Brennan said noncommittally, a certain grayness in the tone of her voice that Booth immediately noted. His cocky grin faded from his lips as he once again detected a certain melancholy in her manner.

At the return of Brennan's maudlin behavior, Booth glanced at his half-full glass of expensive single-malt whisky and considered his options. He rubbed his palm against the small of her back in an almost encouraging gesture, then raised his glass once more as he made his decision, taking a long sip, then set it down on the bar.

"_Oooh_," he hissed as he felt the whisky evaporate into his sinuses, flaring his nostrils and making his eyes water a little. "_Woof_," he murmured, shaking his head as if doing so would enable him to shake off the effects of the whisky's vapors.

"Woof?" Brennan repeated as she looked on his actions with curiosity. "What are you, a dog now?" Booth rolled his eyes at her, and Brennan shrugged her shoulders. "Sorry," she mumbled before she looked away from him in mild annoyance.

However, not to be distracted from his goal, Booth raised the glass, swirled the whisky around, admiring how the amber liquid clung ever-so-briefly to the inside of the glass, then brought the drink to his lips, and took another hearty sip. "Mmmmph," he grunted as his sinuses once more felt the effects of the liquor. "Hoooh, boy," he said, flashing his eyebrows at Brennan, who shot him a strange look.

"Why are you guzzling that twelve-dollar whisky like it's a two-dollar pint of beer?" she finally asked with a furrowed brow. "That seems rather uncouth, don't you think?"

"Wait," he said, taking another sip before setting his glass down on the bar. "I'm just trying to balance the equities here, Bones," he explained with a grin. "I'm thinking that it's about time that we get out of here, right, but I can't just leave this fine single malt scotch whisky languishing here, or—worse yet—let it go to waste." He gave her hip a light squeeze and waggled his eyebrows. "I'm a firm believer in the leave-no-man-behind school of alcohol consumption."

Brennan raised a skeptical eyebrow but did not reply as Booth took a last sip of his whisky, draining it, and clanking the glass unceremoniously on the bar.

"Hey, Bones—"

"What, Booth?" she answered.

He reached into his pocket, and quickly produced a few bills. Sliding the bills across the bar in the direction of the bartender's tip jar, Booth smiled at her as he said, "So, unless you wanna stay—I think I'm about ready to leave. Let's get outta here, huh?" he asked quietly.

The bartender turned around as Booth spoke, and, seeing that the soldier had drained three ounces of expensive single-malt in his glass in about as many minutes, gave him a mildly disapproving look as he swiped the cash off the bar.

"Thanks, buddy," Booth said to him with a slight jerk of his chin, then urged Brennan away from the bar.

"Don't you want to stay a little longer?" she asked, the look in her pale eyes giving away the fact that she was not in the least bit disappointed about the prospect of leaving.

Booth shook his head and kissed the top of her head again, taking yet another opportunity to inhale the delightful smell of her hair. "Absolutely not," he said quickly. "I've had quite my fill of generals, colonels, Pentagon types, and grateful Afghani dignitaries—thank you very much. I'm ready if you are, so let's get out of here."

He placed his hand on the small of Brennan's back, stroking his thumb along the curve of her hip as he followed her out of the reception hall and the made their way across the hotel lobby, down two escalators, and eventually came to the valet stand. Brennan instructed the valet to summon their limousine while Booth knit his brows together as he watched not one, but two taxi cabs pull up one behind the other in the circular drive in front of them.

"I'm still not sure why we had to take the limo," he grumbled as he pulled her close and nuzzled his nose into her hair.

Brennan rolled her eyes at his familiar complaint, but didn't pull away as she said, "Well, I'm still not sure I understand why you're so opposed to the idea of a limousine in the first place."

Booth kissed her hair then pulled away. "Come on, Bones," he said, raising his eyebrows and giving her a wide-eyed, pouty-lipped look. "You know I'm not a limo kind of guy."

"I don't know what that means," she said evenly. "I never realized there was such a thing as a 'limo kind of guy,' so it comes as a bit of a surprise that one can somehow fall outside of a category of which I was unaware existed."

"Seriously?" he snorted. "You're kidding me, right? You and me have been partners for five, going on six years now. You know when it comes right down to it, you know—Pabst Blue Ribbon versus Heineken, Target versus Macy's, ice hockey versus golf—you know the kind of guy I am. And you know that I'm not the kind of guy that takes a limo around town."

"So, you're saying you have plebeian tastes?" she responded.

"Pleb-_what?" _Booth retorted, though he knew that she knew he knew exactly what that term meant. "No, I'm just saying, I prefer to, you know, fly under the radar a bit—keep a low profile. And, well, riding in a limo doesn't exactly say 'low profile' to me."

"Hmmm," Brennan mumbled. "Like I said before we left my apartment, there's no way I was going to get into a cab in a three thousand dollar designer dress and risk getting anything indelible on it, okay? You've known me long enough, Booth, to know that I'm normally not opposed to riding in a taxi cab. But tonight, considering the magnitude of the occasion, and the nature of the apparel we each are wearing—you in your black tie gabardine uniform coat and trousers, and me in this delicate dress—well, it made sense to, as you say, 'step things up a notch' and take a limousine."

Booth sighed. "I guess you have a point," he admitted with a sheepish grin as he brushed his hand over the smooth wool fabric of his uniform jacket, which had indeed cost him a pretty penny to buy. "But, for the record, I'm not a limo kind of guy."

"I'm well aware of that," Brennan nodded. "Now, if we could stop lamenting the real issue here—"

"And, what's that again?" Booth asked.

Her eyes narrowing at him a bit in mischief, Brennan responded, "The fact that you're unhappy that you didn't get to drive."

Booth opened his mouth to say something, and, then, knowing that Brennan had him, promptly closed his mouth and remained quiet. She smirked in response, and the pair waited for a few more seconds in silence.

However, still one to fidget when bored, Booth finally commented in a delayed response to an earlier detail that his partner had shared with him. "Wait a sec—three thousand dollars?" he blurted out, the figure having finally percolated through the layers of his mind. "Jeez, Bones."

"I wasn't going to wear a dress I'd worn before to an event like this," she said. "Besides, it's been a while since I've bought a dress of this sort, and I thought this presented the perfect opportunity."

Booth, flummoxed, wasn't sure how to respond. "Thanks, umm, I think."

"It _is _a couture dress, Booth," Brennan said as she watched her partner wrestle with the implication of the piece of clothing she was wearing. "Couture isn't cheap."

Once again, Booth opened his mouth to speak, but wasn't sure what to say to such a remark. Thankfully, he was saved from the further awkwardness of the moment by the limousine, which pulled up in front of them just as he was scratching his head in search of a cleverer response.

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><p><strong>-TBC-<strong>

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><p><strong>AN2**: This is the second of five parts in this story. Many thanks to those who left initial reviews, and to those who haven't, please consider submitting a review. We greatly appreciate them. Thanks for reading!~


	3. Part III: The Better Part of Valour, Pt1

**Seeing the Monuments**

**By**: Lesera128 & _dharmamonkey_

**Rated**: M

**Disclaimer**: We still don't own anything...and it's still pretty obvious that we don't—at least to us. And, yes, our permanent mailing address has now been changed to the sandbox—you know which one.

**Summary**: Booth is honored for valor in Afghanistan at a formal banquet, Brennan attends, guilt rears its ugly head, and Booth has to resort to drastic measures in the limo on their ride home to get rid of Brennan's melancholy. Sequel to "When She Ran Away." Set during early season 6. Very AU, and very, very M.

**A/N**: This story is a sequel to "When She Ran Away." It's set approximately two weeks after the conclusion of that story. It was inspired, in part, by the opening ten minutes of the 1987 movie "No Way Out." Similarities between the opening scenes of that movie and this fic are most likely deliberate.~

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><p><strong>Part III: The Better Part of Valour, Part I<strong>

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><p>The pair had been sitting in the back of the limo for approximately ten minutes in the middle of the Potomac River, as they had just started to cross onto the George Mason Memorial Bridge when a traffic report on the radio informed them that an accident on the D.C. side of the bridge had reduced the flow of cars to a single lane.<p>

Watching Booth scowl at the news, Brennan nodded at the limo's minibar and said, "It's probably not Oban, but you should take what you want."

With a shake of his head, Booth began to interlace his fingers, crack his knuckles, and then undo them before he started the process all over again. "No, I'm good."

Brennan watched Booth repeat the process of fidgeting for three full circuits before she scooted over to the minibar and said, "You may be good, but if you keep doing that, Booth, I can assure you that I won't be." Reaching into the minibar, Brennan began to shift through the bottles and then looked over at Booth. "It appears that your choices are...Smirnoff Vodka, Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum...or Jim Beam Whiskey."

Shaking his head again, Booth said, "Jim Beam's not just whiskey, Bones, any more than Oban is."

"Obviously, you're referencing some finer nuance of whiskey of which I'm unaware," Brennan said. "Feel free to enlighten me."

"Well," Booth said as he reached in and pulled out the fifth of Jim Beam. "Oban, which I was drinking earlier, is a fairly expensive single malt Scotch whisky of the West Highland variety. Scotch whisky is distilled from malted barley. Now, this here? This is bourbon, Bones—a blended Kentucky bourbon, distilled from corn. That means it's sweeter than a Scotch whisky and a bit more spicy in the flavoring."

"So, does this mean that you're going to go with the Jim Beam then?" Brennan asked as she reached for a tumbler.

Shrugging, Booth said, "Considering that I'm not in the mood for vodka or rum, yeah, the Jim Beam will have to do if you're insisting we have a drink."

"_We _are not having a drink because I'm not fidgeting and driving you crazy," Brennan said as took the bottle from him and opened it. "_You_, however, are having a drink."

Booth arched an eyebrow at her words. He considered how he'd first come upon her earlier in the bar, and how he smelled the alcohol on her breath when he'd first sidled up to her. "I don't like to drink alone, Bones," he said with a vague smile. "Come on. I know you had a few earlier, but humor me. I seriously doubt that one more drink will knock the woman who once famously drank bhang on her ass, so what were you drinking earlier?"

Brennan stared at him for a few seconds, her gaze narrowing at each word he spoke. Booth took her silence in stride, jovially nodding at her as he pressed the point. "You don't really like scotch, not the way I do. And I don't think I've ever seen you drink Irish whiskey. So what was it?" He guessed bourbon, from the smell of it, but he couldn't be sure and wanted to give her the chance to tell him herself. _Come on, Bones. It's a simple question. Just start talking, huh?_

Handing him the glass once she'd poured in a healthy finger of the amber liquid, Brennan shook her head as she continued to ignore his question. As he took the glass from her and began to sip it, he watched as Brennan reached into the small compartment containing the cold mixers and pulled out a small green glass bottle of Perrier.

Twisting the top off, she tossed it onto the minibar and reached out to tap her bottle to his glass. "_Salud._"

As she lifted the bottle to her lips, she watched Booth give her a small, questioning stare. At last, after she had taken a long sip of the sparkling mineral water, Brennan tilted her head and said, "What?"

"You sorta dodged my question there, Bones," Booth said gently and a slight smile on his lips that rapidly faded. "And you know it." He sat back and took a sip of the bourbon, which was definitely a bit less caustic to his sinus passages than the Oban had been. "Now, come on, Bones—level with me."

Brennan contemplated how much or how little to say given the direction in which she knew the conversation could potentially head. Given her current state of mind, she knew that having such a conversation with Booth in the confined space they currently occupied—one that might force them, because of logistics, to talk to one another without any possibility of Brennan being able to take a few minutes to herself if she needed them—wasn't an appealing thought. At last, after she realized that she'd need to give Booth _some _type of answer, she hoped that perhaps he would let her get away with something that was a vague half-truth at best. So, Brennan simply shook her head and said, "I'm just feeling a bit dehydrated and don't wish to imbibe any more alcohol at the present moment." She stopped and her voice became a bit softer as she added, "Is that okay?"

"Sure," Booth said as he sipped his drink. "You know whatever you want to do is always fine by me, Bones—"

She breathed a sigh of relief as she replied, "Great—"

"Except when you're not being honest with me," he added as he looked at her over the rim of his glass. "Now, even if I didn't suspect something was off with you before because I could see you swaying at the bar when I walked up earlier—and I sure as hell know that didn't happen from the single glass of champagne you had during the entire banquet—then I definitely know something's up now."

"And why do you think that?" Brennan asked, feeling the tightening sense of panic that had cloyed at her all evening begin to get stronger as what was left of her moderate buzz all but fell away to nothingness.

"Because," Booth said. "You're making a big deal out of it. And we both know you don't make big deals out of things unless you think something's a big deal, so—" He let his words trail off as he considered how to proceed. "Bones, look—talk to me. What's going on in that beautiful brain of yours?" His pleading brown eyes met her gray ones as he tried to coax her into talking to him. When she was silent for another few pertinent seconds, he asked quietly, "Is this about tonight?"

"Is what about tonight?" Brennan tried one last time to evade his query.

"Bones—" he said softly. "Come on. Please?"

Knowing that she was had, and that evasion would no longer serve as a tactic through which she might be able to get out of discussing the issue, she let out a clear sigh of annoyance. "Damn," she finally muttered through clenched teeth as she looked away from him.

"What?" he pressed again, feeling slightly hopeful at her single word response, even if Brennan wasn't yet telling him what he wanted to know, at least she'd stopped trying to avoid his question.

"I don't want to talk about this," she said faintly after a few more seconds.

"Bones," he said, his voice low yet even. "If it's got you this upset, we need to talk about it."

"Why?" Brennan asked.

"Because," Booth reminded her. "Remember what we talked about before? No holding back—no secrets—no running. That's what we agreed to, right?"

"I'm not running from anything, Booth," Brennan insisted as she turned to meet his inquisitive stare. "I just don't want to talk about this right now." She paused and stared at him as she considered his words. "Can't we just say that I'm sure that you've got things you didn't want to talk about with me, and I've got things I don't want to talk about with you—at least, at the current moment I prefer not to discuss them—and leave it at that? Please?"

Booth sighed and cocked his head. "No," he said. "Come on, Bones. If you've got something you want to ask me—fine. That's no problem—fine, great. Just ask me, and I'll tell you anything you want to know because I'm pretty damn sure there are probably things that I didn't tell you that you wanted to know about—and that's perfectly okay—but that's not what we're talking about here, right now, okay? What we're talking about is the question I asked you, and it'd be great if you would stop trying to weasel out of giving me a straight answer. I mean, come on, Bones. You don't want to talk about 'this' or 'it'... but what the hell does that mean? What exactly is 'it' that you don't want to talk about—"

"I did that already once," Brennan said suddenly, responding to one of Booth's earlier statements in a bit of a delayed manner. Shaking her head, she said, "I tried that once before, Booth, and it didn't work all that well, so you can perhaps see why I might be reticent to do it again—"

"Do what, Bones?" he asked, growing a bit irritated himself at her continued vague statements. "Come on, please—just tell me."

"I asked you once already," she insisted with a shake of her head. "You said that you if I wanted to know something that I should just ask and that you would tell me." She refused to look up at him as she pursed her lips before muttering, "I asked you a very important question before, but—" Shaking her head, she sighed as she let her voice trail off. "I-I...please. Just stop pressing me, okay? I really don't want to talk about this right now."

"We have to, Bones," Booth responded, his concern growing with every little bit of information that he managed to pry out of his partner and girlfriend "We kinda just spent the last three-odd hours at a black-tie gala event during which I got awarded a pretty big medal, on account of shit I did over in Afghanistan. It's obvious—" He paused, trying to figure out a way to be gentle in broaching what was obviously a sore subject. "Bones," he said softly. "I think I know you well enough to know, even if I hadn't seen your reaction with my own two eyes tonight, that hearing them read the citation upset you, and I think we need to talk about it." Her eyes widened a bit in spite of herself, the panic that she'd been working so hard to keep at bay growing stronger with each passing minute. Booth felt a stab in his gut tighten as he saw her response, but he knew that things would have to get a little worse before they could get better. "Not talking about it isn't gonna make this go away, Bones."

"I'm well aware of that, Booth," Brennan said in a remarkably calm voice as she leveled her gaze at him. _I wish to God that it would, but even I'm not that stupid_—_just, please, Booth. Don't make me do this right now. I've...I can't take very much more of this tonight_—_I just can't. Please... let me be. _"And, I already told you after you came back to the table, and I congratulated you—I'm fine. Nothing's wrong, I'm very proud of you, and I'm quite happy I was able to be here to support you tonight."

"Bones," Booth began. "I'm really glad that you came with me tonight, you know, to support me and be here with me and everything." He took a deep breath. "But, tonight wasn't just about me, you know?"

Somewhat taken aback by his words, Brennan shook her head in confusion. "I'm not sure I take your point."

"Tonight, Bones—in a way, tonight was about us," Booth said gently. "When I asked you to come here with me, it wasn't just so that I could have my partner fill in as my date. I wanted to take my girlfriend, you know? And, so, in a way, tonight was the first time you and me went out, together, as something more than just partners. That...that's really the reason why tonight was so important to me—not because of the damn medal I got...you know that, right?"

Brennan contemplated his words, tilted her head at him, and then said, "I hadn't considered that point."

"So, you just bought that gorgeous dress and had that stack of blue lacy stuff that's the same color as said killer dress just sitting on your dresser all week because you, what, got a little carried away during a lunchtime shopping detour with Angela, huh?" Booth winked, then considered how Brennan's fashion sense seemed incredibly resistant to her best friend's influence, even if Angela had managed to leave an indelible mark in other areas of Brennan's life.

"I find that I feel better prepared to handle these type of social obligations if I'm dressed in a certain way," Brennan began. "I believe, so the saying goes...one has to look a certain part at these type of functions—isn't that true?"

"Yeah," Booth said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "I guess."

"I was unaware," Brennan began slowly, "that the real reason that you wanted me to come tonight—besides being able to accompany you and support you in a situation that I know you don't particularly enjoy because it shines attention on you, when—as you said, you 'like to keep a low profile'—I didn't know you viewed this event as having personal significance for us, Booth."

"It's stupid," Booth said, looking away from her, his voice a bit softer than it had been earlier, betraying a bit of the vulnerability that he felt—and would let no one else but Brennan see. "But...I did like the idea of being able to take you and not just have to do the good-ole standby of 'she's my partner' spiel."

"Sometimes," Brennan began, as she reached out and let her hand sneak out to meet Booth's after she had set her bottle of Perrier on the minibar. "Sometimes, these finer nuances of interpersonal communication escape me, Booth. You...you have to tell me, okay?"

"Yeah," he nodded. "That was my bad."

Brennan narrowed her eyes skeptically his remark, and several long, wordless seconds hung between them before she broke the silence. "I'll do better next time," she said. "I promise—I just hope this is the last of your medal presentation ceremonies I have to attend. And, I say that not because I'm not proud of you, but because I hope that there aren't any more opportunities for you to do anything that you'd get a medal for."

"Why on earth would I have another medal ceremony?" Booth asked, his brow furrowed in confusion at her statement. "I'm getting out, Bones, not staying in...not going back in—and, if I'm not in, there's nothing to give me a medal for." He let her hand fall away from his as he set his glass back on top of the bar and cracked his knuckles before he added, "Besides, even if I stayed in, which I'm not, I'm sure as hell not going to do any more nutty, crazy stuff that's gonna qualify me for a medal. At this point, I've learned my lesson, thank you very much."

A dark, apprehensive look crossed over Brennan's face as soon as Booth spoke. He noticed her response instantly, but he would've known that he'd said the wrong thing even as if he hadn't seen Brennan's response when she spoke next. "On second thought," she said, pointing in the direction of the minibar. "I think maybe I will have that drink. Would you pour me one please?"

Booth waited for a minute as he reached over to the bar and poured her a double Jim Beam. It was only when he'd handed her the glass of bourbon, and Brennan had taken a large sip, that he finally asked her, "Bones, what's really going on here? What's wrong?"

Raising the glass to her lips again, Brennan paused long enough to reply, "Nothing's wrong." She then took another long sip.

He watched her swallow and rest the glass on the edge of her seat. "Yeah?" he asked after a few seconds.

Brennan nodded. "Yes."

"Then why'd you want another drink?" Booth asked in as gentle a tone as he could manage.

"What do you mean, 'another drink,' Booth?" she asked, stroking her finger around the brim of the glass, as she too maintained a quiet tone of voice.

Booth rolled his eyes at her obvious attempts to deflect the topic once again. "Come on, Bones," he said. "If you don't want to talk about what's really bothering you, that's one thing. But, really? You're going to do the dodge and deflect about the fact that you got a drink at the bar?"

"And, if I was?" Brennan said as she looked at him.

"I know you had a drink, or two, at the reception, Bones," Booth told her. Noting the way her gray eyes seemed to harden at his words, he grabbed his own glass from the top of the bar and took another sip before he continued. "You seemed to know the bartender pretty well for someone who just ordered a club soda and lime, you know. I heard him ask you if you wanted another round." He held her gaze, and when Brennan refused to concede the point, Booth felt a flash of annoyance at her stubbornness. "So, come on, Bones—what, was that just another round of club soda? Gimme a break," he said with a shake of his head.

"Fine," she huffed. " I had a drink—so what?" she shrugged. " I don't see what the big issue is here, Booth. That place was full of people having drinks—most of them having a lot more than I was."

"Come on, Bones," he said, raising his eyebrows as he repeated what was becoming a familiar plea. "Look—I can tell something's wrong. You've got that look on your face right now—and you've had it off and on all night—" _Yeah, that one_, Booth thought to himself as he facial expression grew more serious. _That one right_—_yep, right there_—_that's the one that's a variant of that look you've had all night. Since they started reading that citation, _he added silently. "You're scared about something," he finally said, knowing he didn't have any other choice since Brennan wouldn't talk to him. Although he feared what taking the direct approach might do to inflame the situation, it was rapidly getting to the point that Booth knew he would prefer an angry Brennan to one that was on the verge of completely shutting down like she was teeteering on the edge of right now. "Hey—" he began as he gestured with his glass. "You can hide those kinds of things from other people, Bones, but you know as well as I do that you can't hide that kind of thing from me. So, as much as I know you don't want to hear this from me, I gotta ask—what exactly's got you so rattled? What are you afraid of?"

Brennan scowled and suddenly snapped at Booth's words—much as he'd known she would. "Fine. You want to talk about this?"

"Yeah, Bones," Booth conceded. "I wouldn't have asked otherwise."

"Then, for your information, I'll have you know that I'm not afraid of anything Booth, but since you did ask, and in the interests of fair disclosure, fine. I feel that I should tell you that I did hear things this evening, when General McKeen was reading your citation, that gave me some concerns—some _significant _concerns."

_Oh God, _Booth thought. _I mean, I know I asked for it, but even still—here it comes. _ He rubbed his fingers over the razor-short hair on the back of his head and then said, "And, was there anything in particular that gave you 'concerns,' Bones—or was it just the general tone of the evening?

Brennan leveled a hard stare at her partner. "You tell me, Booth," she said carefully. "Is there something I _should _be concerned about?"

"Oh, please," he said with an exasperated shake of his head. "We're not going to play that game here, are we? Why can't you just tell me, Bones?"

"Well, if you can read me as well as you say you can," Brennan countered, "then you tell me what concerned me."

He pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, staring back at her. He considered her words for several seconds and then sighed. _Fine. _ "Well," he began. "I-I...I think you're afraid I'm going to let them talk me into staying in."

"I said no such thing!" Brennan said sharply as her nostrils flared and she realized how much harsher her voice had sounded than she'd actually intended. She refused to let herself bite her lower lip in a display of weakness and forced herself to take a deep breath as she felt her nostrils continue to flare at the strong emotions she was feeling, despite her best efforts to maintain an emotionally-neutral front.

"You didn't have to," Booth said grimly as he watched Brennan grapple to get herself under control after her small outburst. "You were standing right next to me when Captain Robinson made that comment about me leaving being a great loss to the Army, _blah, blah, blah, _and right next to me when that three-star General Phillips and about a half-dozen other guys with bars, stars and oak leaves tried to give me all those reasons to stay in after the medal presentation—"

"Please don't put words into my mouth, Booth," Brennan said with a shake of her head. "I didn't say that, and I find it quite arrogant on your part that you'd just assume that you know my opinions on a matter well enough to verbalize them since I haven't shared them with you—either because I wanted to directly, or in response to your solicitation of my opinion on an issue, thank you very much."

"So then why don't you tell me what's wrong?" Booth responded. "I wouldn't have to put words in your mouth if you'd actually speak. So, you're right—I can't read your mind, but it's evident that you're upset, so please talk to me, Bones. You walked off in the middle of me talking to one of those hoity-toits when we both know you're always much better talking to those type of people than I am. If you were here tonight to support me, then why'd you walk off?" He paused, not wanting to bait her or drive her to tears, but knowing he had to get to the bottom of what was bothering her, he continued to press. "What's going on, Bones?"

"Stop it," she told him sharply as she set down her tumbler of bourbon. "Just stop it. I already told you, I'm not talking about this right now."

_So you are upset and there is something to talk about, _Booth mused silently. _Although, it's not like I didn't know that already, but even still. _He let forth a heavy sigh and rubbed his palm nervously against his trouser leg. "No," he responded immediately. "I can't let this one go, Bones. We need to talk about this, and we're going to do this right now." Brennan's eyes flashed at him as he nodded at her before he continued speaking. "Why'd you walk off and go to the bar? Why did you leave me, Bones?" he pressed her again.

"I'm not the one who did the leaving, Booth!" Brennan suddenly snapped at him. Her face flushed red in anger as she tried to recover some of her composure. "I didn't leave you, and I'm not leaving you," she finally muttered.

"Do you think I left you?" he asked quietly.

At his words, Brennan felt a sharp, but familiar pain, twist in her heart. She stared at him for several seconds, almost a full moment in time, before she looked away. The image of him giving her a similar look, a meaningful and pointed glance shared across a crowded airport, flashed in her mind.

"You did leave," Brennan finally murmured, feeling a tightness in her chest that almost made breathing an impossibility. "You did leave me—because I forced you to do it."

Booth stared at her, knowing in that second, what she was thinking of: a look of longing and regret and apology across the Departing Flights hall at Dulles International Airport when he'd gone AWOL to say goodbye to her.

"That day—the day I left for Maluku—that day was the first time that you did something you never would've had to do if it weren't for me," she said quietly. "You went AWOL to say goodbye to me...but, even still—then you left. You didn't stop me from leaving, you didn't ask me to stay—and neither did I. I let you go, and I as good as signed your death warrant, Booth. I sent you to a war zone, but you went. You didn't try to stop me from making you go, and I hate you for that."

As she spoke, the words finally tumbling out of her mouth, Brennan felt an errant tear escape her left eye. She quickly wiped it away with her free hand, smearing her lovely eye makeup in the process. However, she didn't care as she sniffled slightly.

"Is that all this is about?" Booth finally asked, a deep, raw and personal pain that obviously matched Brennan's quite evident in his voice. "Is all this just about the past, Bones—or is it something more? Do...do you think that I'm going to leave you now and that something's gonna change between us? What are you saying, Bones?"

"There's no point to this conversation," she said with another shake of her head as she sniffled again. "I find there to be no reason to discuss it considering the fact, in your own words, Booth, we dealt with those issues a month ago. So, perhaps the question that needs to be addressed is why are you suddenly retracting your original statement?"

"My original statement?" His nose and brow crinkled at her remark. "I don't understand what you're talking about. I'm just a dumb infantry soldier, and I'm having trouble following you here. Break it down for me here—what are you saying?"

"Stop it!" Brennan said. "I hate it when you do that. I hate it—I fucking hate it."

"Hate what?" he asked quietly.

"When you refer to yourself as a solider," Brennan finally explained. "Why do you keep doing that when I thought that you said there wasn't any chance in hell that you were staying in, right, Booth? You said you were getting out, not going back in, right? Isn't that what you said?"

"Well, yeah, Bones," Booth replied. "That _is_ what I said, but what does it matter if I refer to myself as a grunt or a cop? What's the big deal?"

"Because!" Brennan exclaimed. "Every time you do that do you know what I think of, Booth?" She stopped, as she inhaled a sharp breath. "Do you?"

"_How… about you?"_

_And, then, there it was: a slow nod, a faint smile, an expectant look in his brown eyes—and one that had nothing to do with her. And, in that second, Brennan's world cracked into a thousand pieces._

_"Yeah…I'll show you. Hannah. She's a journalist, a war correspondent."_

_As Booth reached for his phone, Brennan suddenly felt a wave of panic wash over her. She scrambled to her feet and backpedaled away from Booth, as if he were a poisonous leper._

_"No—" Brennan called out, her single utterance rich with the pain she now felt._

"Every time you say that, every single time, Booth I think about that night we came back...and that night—" Brennan stopped as she let her voice trail off.

_Do you know what that did to me_—_when you told me about Hannah? _she thought, looking at him, almost pleading for him to hear her thoughts so that she wouldn't have to face the pain of finally telling him. _I went to that coffee cart thinking that I'd tell you I loved you and that I was sorry about everything that had happened, all the time we had wasted, and that I wanted to make amends. But, then you told me about Hannah, and I felt like my psyche and metaphorical heart had been broken into so many tiny pieces that the only thing I could do to survive was to run as far and fast away from you as I could run. As soon as I saw that look on your face when you said her name that first time, I thought I'd lost you_—_completely and totally. I thought we were over before we'd even started. It was done_—_I thought I'd lost you before I even really had you. Do you know what that felt like? Do you know how much loss and regret and loneliness suddenly swept over me, Booth? And, to top it all off, I had no one to blame for it, but myself. There was no one to blame for missing our opportunity to be together but me_—_and that made it even worse._

Brennan struggled to find the words to say all of this to Booth and found her frustration growing even more when she couldn't do so. _God, Booth_—_I never told you this before, and I don't know how to tell you any of this now. Please don't make me do it...I haven't done it yet, so is there really any reason why I need to tell you now? What's the point? Maybe we're just both better off with me not telling you this, right, Booth? Isn't that what you said, anyway_—_the past is better in the past and that there's no point to looking back?_

"The night you came back," Brennan said again, trying to convey her thoughts to him even though it pained her to do so as she met his intense gaze with one of her own. "The night you came back, we talked about all of this, and you said there was no point in dwelling on the past. Do you not remember that conversation?"

"Of course," Booth replied. "Of course, I remember that conversation, Bones. How could I ever forget it? But—" He paused for a minute before he shook his head and continued. "Something tells me what's bothering you has less to do with the past, Bones, and more about the future—especially because you stalked off to the bar about four seconds after that three-star started giving me the whole 'your country needs you' re-enlistment sales pitch."

"I would tell you if that were the issue, Booth," Brennan said sharply. "I haven't, so unless you're calling me a liar—"

"Oh, for God's sake, Bones," he said, his voice pinc ed with frustration. "Something's wrong, and I just want to know what it is so I can be a real partner here—and I don't mean that in the FBI, chase bad guys sense—and help you deal with whatever's bothering you." He turned and looked out the darkly tinted window of the limo for a few seconds to gather his patience before he turned back to face her. "Look, I hate seeing you upset." Brennan opened her mouth to say something, but Booth plowed on with his small speech and didn't give her a chance to get a word in edgewise. "And you can deny it all you want—see, just like you were about to do right there—but, I know you're upset right now. You're hurting and seeing you like that tears me up inside. I just want to know what's bothering you so that I can fix it—"

Sighing, Brennan felt torn in her response to Booth's heartfelt words. Part of her loved him even more for his concern and desire to help her, but the other part of her—the larger part of her had been teetering on the edge of chaos all night—again won out. "Booth—"

"Yeah, Bones?" he responded hopefully.

"Please," she said. "Have enough respect for me to trust me to tell you if there's something I need to tell you so that I will," Brennan said. "If there was something that needed to be fixed, you'd be the first person I'd tell, okay?"

"Bones," he tried, knowing there was one last thing he could counter her stubbornness with, and a bit desperate, he softened his voice as he said, "I love you, Bones. I love you more than anything. You're hurting, okay? I know you're hurting. And when I see you hurting, it hurts me. If something I said or did, or didn't say or didn't do, is hurting you, I want to know. Come on, Bones..." He leaned forward and reached out to cup her jaw with his hand. "Please, talk to me," he pleaded.

She stared at him for several seconds, some of her resolve finally starting to melt away. After a full minute, at last she responded softly, "I really hate it when you do that."

A fleeting smile crossed Booth's face before he pursed his lips once more. "What? You hate it when I'm my charming, good looking, debonair and suave guy that I am?"

"No—" Brennan said as she narrowed her eyes at him and refused to allow a twitch at the corners of her mouth to turn into a small smile.

"Then, what?" Booth asked. "Do you hate I touch you?" he said, trying to bite back a grin. "Because, I gotta tell you that that sorta flies in the face of a lot of evidence I've collected over the past month."

"No," Brennan said with a shake of her head. "I-I..."

"What?"

"I hate it when you look at me like that," she nodded at him. "See, you're doing it right now. You look at me like that and then you touch me like you're doing right now and then you expect me to go against a lifetime of my habits in favor of a new set of behaviors that have been established for less than thirty days, and I hate myself for letting you get away with it just because you simply smiled at me like that in the first place," she let out in a long-winded rant.

Unable to suppress it any longer, Booth grinned. "Ya know, Bones, I love you for all that—for being strong, and stubborn, and yet for being brave enough to try a different way." He stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. "Besides, that whole Boothy-touchy-smiley-thing kinda always works," he added with a shrug. After a few more seconds of silence, he added, "Seriously, though. Talk to me, Bones. If we can't be totally truthful and honest between each other, then none of the rest of what we have matters."

"Are you sure you want to do this, Booth?" she asked, some of the tension in her voice having seemingly unwound as she looked him directly in the eyes, for the first time not bothering to hide the emotional turmoil that clearly swirled in her steely gaze. "Because this is contrary to what I understood you wanted to do about leaving the past in the past. If we're decompartmentalizing here—if that's what you really want me to do, then you should know before we proceed that that's really the point of no return. Once I've decompartmentalized something, Booth, I can't compartmentalize it again. I just don't know how. So, are you really certain this is what you want to do? Do you really want to know?"

Booth's forehead crinkled as he shrugged. "If you're hurting, Bones, I want to help," he said. "And, I can't do that unless I know what's wrong, so yeah, of course—I want to know what's hurting you so I can help you."

Brennan leaned her head to the side, uncrossed and crossed her legs. "Booth," she said earnestly, "there have been four times in my life when I felt like my whole metaphorical world was falling apart." She paused, shrugging away the voice inside of her that counseled silence.

"First, when Russ left me, and it was obvious I'd lost my whole family, and that none of them were coming back."

Booth nodded, then raised his eyebrows expectantly as he awaited the rest of her litany.

"Second, the two weeks that I thought you were dead after Pam Noonan shot you."

_That was the worst time in my entire life_, Brennan thought. _God, I don't know how I survived that, but I did, so if I did that, I can do this now_—_I know I can._

"Third, when I lost Zach," she continued, surprised at how easily she was mentioning some of the most crucially transformative and painful events in her life.

_But, you were there for me that time, when I lost Zach...when I had to watch Sweets load him into that transport from the mental institution when they transferred him from the hospital. So, even if I didn't love you_—_and, I do love you. I love you very, very much. But, even if I didn't, I'd still tell you, I think, because you were there for me when other people weren't._

"And fourth, that night on the Mall after we'd come back and you told me you'd met Hannah," she finished with a nod.

"Bones," Booth said, seeing the pain that was clear in her face. "We've been over that part. You don't have to—I mean, I know that I told you I wanted you to tell me what was bothering you, but we've been over the whole Hannah thing before, so you don't have to—"

"Actually," Brennan said as lifted a finger to his lips and placed it gently on them to interrupt him. "We've talked about Hannah a lot in the context of what happened to you and how you felt about the events that precipitated the development of her brief sexual relationship with you in Afghanistan. But, we haven't actually talked about how I felt about Hannah. Do you understand the difference? Because, it's very important to understanding the larger issues, here, Booth. You wanted me to explain how I felt, and while I apologize for the circuity of my response, I'm not quite sure how else to proceed."

Booth reached out and kissed her finger. Brennan smiled faintly at the intimate gesture. "Tell me however you can tell me what you need me to know, then," he said with a faint smile.

"In that minute or two before I ran away from you that night, after you told me about Hannah, I can't... I can't really explain everything that I was feeling," Brennan began. "When you told me what you did, I felt like we missed our chance. And, when I say that I don't simply mean that I believed that we'd missed our chance to be together. I-I... do you remember when I said that I felt like I'd signed your death warrant the day I saw you at Dulles before I got on the plane to go to Indonesia?"

Booth merely nodded.

"It's a bit melodramatic, I know, but you have to understand that the thing I feared most happening to you while you were deployed was your death. And, that night—when we came back, and you were walking towards me, I was so happy to see you because I knew you weren't dead. And, I felt relief because I felt like I had my chance to put things right between us. But, when you told me that you'd meant someone during your time overseas—well, in that moment, I'd felt like I'd lost that chance to make amends for what I did before we left. And, I was crushed, Booth—completely and utterly devastated."

"So," he began slowly. "This guilt that you've been carrying around since that night...it really didn't start then, did it? It goes back much further than that?"

Brennan nodded her head by way of an answer to him. "Yes—yes, it does. I..if I'm going to be honest, I first became aware of how guilty I felt because of what happened between us that night in front of the Hoover Building the weekend we went to Illinois for my high school reunion. When we were dancing, in that gymnasium, for a few moments I felt what it might've been like if I'd said yes to you instead of turning you down that night. And, I think that was the first time I realized how wonderful what we could've had might've been, and how painful it must've been for you to not only have to deal with losing that, but also having to pretend to have it with me for the purposes of that case." She stopped, took a breath, and then plunged forward, lest she lose her nerve and never finish telling Booth that which he needed to hear. "And, I think I realized it a little bit more when you met Catherine, and started to date her even though I was seeing Andrew at the time. And, finally, I think I realized what I'd truly done to you that day at the airport, and—the more time I had alone, the more time I was in Maluku and spent time by myself, the more I realized the magnitude of what I'd done to you."

"Bones—" he finally said, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. "You didn't—"

"No," Brennan said as she shook her head. "Please, Booth. You said that you wanted to hear this, so please let me speak."

"Okay," he sighed.

"I'm going to summarize a tremendous amount of information that I gathered after intensive reflection and meditation," Brennan said. "But, the proverbial short version is as follows: some people might mistake my overt embracing of rational realism with a type of pessimism because I always anticipate worst case scenarios. I came to fear that your death in Afghanistan was the worst case scenario outcome in that situation, but it wasn't the only thing I felt guilty about in so far as eliciting an outcome over my actions that night I rejected you. You have to understand that my guilt only began with my rejection of you. It started with that, but it continued to grow with each realization I had. The more I thought about it the more I realized how badly things had deteriorated between us because of my rejection of your offer that made you need to go as far away as the Middle East to seek some type of respite. And, then, as I contemplated the fact that my actions had directly contributed to your participation in a resumption of active duty in the Army, I started to think about everything that might happen to you because you were in Afghanistan. I started to worry about any harm you might sustain—from physical injuries to psychological trauma. And, I worried about how you being separated from Parker would affect both he and you, and as selfish as it was, I was scared I'd never have a chance to tell you how I felt about you." She paused, reflecting for a moment before continuing. "So, yes, all of those things combined to make me feel a certain culpability in things between us because when I left, I didn't realize that I was leaving you even though I thought that you were the one who was leaving," she finished explaining, echoing her earlier words. "It was never my intent to leave you to leave you, Booth."

"I know you didn't," he said, not exactly sure what she was getting at, but sensing that he had to ride along with her on this path for a while.

"You don't understand, though, do you?" she asked, a bit of disappointed frustration coming into her voice.

"I'm trying here, Bones," he said gently. "I really am, but, no—I'm not certain what you're trying to tell me."

"I-I...I didn't realize when I left, that I had actually left you," she said sadly. "I didn't realize until I got to Maluku, Booth, that _I_ had left _you_. That's what was the final metaphorical nail in the metaphorical coffin, Booth. I didn't realize everything that I was setting into motion when I left you until it was too late. At the time, I know it sounds foolish, but I just wanted to get away and find that space, that distance that I felt I needed to regain my bearings and mental calm after the Taffet case. And, what I didn't understand until I had it, it was that the space I thought I needed to, I don't know—to rediscover myself—that I finally figured out that that's not what I really what I wanted. I was trying to find that place I used to know, to be that person I used to be, and going on a dig seemed at the time the natural way to accomplish that goal. But, what I didn't understand was that person I used to be—she doesn't exist anymore. I am who I am now because of you, Booth, and I can't go back to being who I was before. It's like turning back time—it simply can't be done. It's impossible."

She paused after speaking those words and stared at him expectantly. Booth, still somewhat at a loss, and feeling like shit for not grasping what he knew Brennan was trying so hard to explain. _I'm trying here, Bones. I really am_—_but, I just don't get it. Help me, here_—_please. _"I understand all that, Bones," he finally told her. "But I'm sorry, Bones. I'm trying every which way to figure out what's going on in that genius brain of yours, but I just don't get it. I'm very, very happy that you feel you can trust me enough to tell me all that you just did, but—I'm sorry. I just don't understand what that has to do with tonight, and why you left me out there on the floor when you went off to the bar to have a drink. I know you're trying really hard to clue me in, but I'm just not getting something here, Bones, because I just don't see the connection."

"I just needed a minute," Brennan said slowly as she looked at him with a strange look in her eye. _I'm trying to make you understand, Booth. But, it's hard...so much harder than I thought it would be. Please...help me._ "I just...I needed some space."

"Okay," he said with a nod. "You needed some space. I get that... but—well, what was it that made you feel you needed that minute, that space? What happened that made you so upset, Bones? Because, when I got to that bar, it seemed like you'd been hitting the hard stuff pretty hard. And, look, Bones—I don't care about how many drinks you had...I really don't. What I _do _care about is what it was that made you feel you needed those drinks." Setting his own drink down on the limo's minibar once more, he said, "Tell me. Please."

"This was not how I envisioned this evening proceeding when I agreed to accompany you, Booth," Brennan said quietly after a few seconds that were heavily pregnant with her hesitation to speak and her desperation to gain relief from the sharing. She shook her head, stared at the limo's far window, and then took another breath before she spoke once more. "You have no idea how completely and utterly bewildering it is to go from feeling the most ardent feelings of love for a person to feeling the most intense feelings of guilt and back again in such a short period of time." She paused and looked up at him as she added, "Particularly when one was never that great at dealing with emotional responses to begin with—"

Booth swallowed, his uncertainty and nervousness increasing, as he heard her voice waver. "I know, Bones," he said.

"I also hate the fact that I feel as if I have no privacy from you anymore, sometimes, Booth," Brennan told him, an unusual clarity suddenly coming into her voice as she slowly nodded her head. "I don't even think I can begin to convey to you how infuriating it is to have someone merely glance at me and know what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, and sometimes it happens even before I do. I've spent years feeling that I was fairly skilled at guarding my thoughts and responses to things, but I can't do that with you even if I want to—it's like I don't have a choice in the matter anymore if I want to keep something from you or not."

"Bones," Booth said, "Just because we're together doesn't mean that you don't have to do anything you don't want to do...you trust me, right?"

"Of course," Brennan replied instantly. "It's just...sometimes, I get scared that I've made a commitment of trust and—"

Her voice trailed off to a bare whisper, and in that moment, Booth suddenly knew what she was really trying to tell him. _Oh, God_—_Bones..._

"You're regretting trusting me," he said after the silence hung between them for almost a full minute. Trying to complete her unfinished sentence, Booth asked, "You are, aren't you?" He sighed and looked away. "What are you saying here, Bones? Is that it? Are you having second thoughts about being with me?"

Brennan didn't have the heart or strength to meet his gaze as she finally answered the pertinent question truthfully. "Everything we've had the past month—or, rather, everything I've felt and said and done the last month is based on a certain set of assumptions, Booth. And, if those assumptions prove to be false, then I can only conclude that the things I've felt and said and done were, therefore, illusory."

"Bones," he said pleadingly, knowing that he still wasn't getting a crucial piece of the puzzle, but recognizing the seriousness of her response, growing more desperate to understand what she was trying to tell him. "I'm just not following you here. What assumptions are you talking about? Help me understand, because right now, Bones—I'm just not getting it. What assumptions did you make?"

"I made certain assessments, Booth, and information of which I've currently become aware has made me doubt some of those most important assessments. In a word—I'm skeptical," Brennan said quietly.

"Wait," he said, feeling his heart skip a beat at her last word, a word that he _finally _could understand. "What are you skeptical of?"

Brennan raised her eyes to meet his for a few seconds before she bit her lip, quickly looked away, and said nothing.

"What is it, Bones?" he asked again. "What are you skeptical of here?"

"It's not a 'what' that I'm skeptical of, Booth—it's a who," she said in a voice so soft that Booth had to strain to hear it.

"Who are you skeptical of?" Booth asked, even though he knew that he'd hate the answer as soon as he asked the question.

"You," she said finally in a voice that was barely louder than a whisper. "You."

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><p><strong>-TBC-<strong>

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><p><strong>AN2**: This is the third of five parts in this story. The fourth part—and the rest of this very intense conversation—will be posting very, very shortly. Initially, we had contemplated one long chapter, but we figured in the name of reader accessibility that we'd break it into two parts and post in fairly short order. While you're waiting for the rest of the conversation to post, we do suggest that you hold your fire (at either Booth and/or Brennan, stubborn individuals that they are) until each has finished saying their piece. We promise...both of them still have lots more that needs to be said...and they will be saying it. And, last, but not least...again, our many thanks to those readers who've reviewed (especially first time delurkers...we love all feedback, but we especially love first time reviewers), but this was a very difficult bit of stuff to get through so we'd love to hear your thoughts. And, now...stay tuned for the next half of the conversation...~


	4. Part IV: The Better Part of Valour, Pt2

**Seeing the Monuments**

**By**: Lesera128 & _dharmamonkey_

**Rated**: M

**Disclaimer**: We still don't own anything...and it's still pretty obvious that we don't—at least to us. And, yes, our permanent mailing address has now been changed to the sandbox—you know which one.

**Summary**: Booth is honored for valor in Afghanistan at a formal banquet, Brennan attends, guilt rears its ugly head, and Booth has to resort to drastic measures in the limo on their ride home to get rid of Brennan's melancholy. Sequel to "When She Ran Away." Set during early season 6. Very AU, and very, very M.

**A/N**: This story is a sequel to "When She Ran Away." It's set approximately two weeks after the conclusion of that story. It was inspired, in part, by the opening ten minutes of the 1987 movie "No Way Out." Similarities between the opening scenes of that movie and this fic are most likely deliberate.~

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><p><strong>Part IV: The Better Part of Valour, Part II<strong>

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><p>Booth's eyes widened as he struggled to consider the ramifications of Brennan's words, and his stomach rapidly sank. "What?" he finally managed to ask her. "What did you say?"<p>

"You wanted to know why I needed that drink, Booth?" Brennan asked, suddenly becoming a bit more animated now that she'd finally said the most painful part of what she'd come to realize over the course of the evening. "I spent the half hour from the time I left the floor of the banquet room and went up to that bar until you got there thinking about everything you'd told me and wondering if everything I thought was true was, in fact, false—in which case everything I felt and said and did was premised on faulty assumptions."

"Are you saying I lied to you?" he gulped.

"I-I...I'm not sure," she said, a built of guilt creeping into her tone. "I mean, I don't want to be, Booth," she said. "But, I've dealt with a tremendous amount of information since the night we met at the coffee cart. And, I know that I shocked you that night, when I told you that I loved you, but it feels as if ever since, I've been metaphorically stumbling on one revelation after another where you're concerned—with everything from Hannah...to what really happened in Afghanistan."

"Bones," he whispered. "Look—"

"I know you're trying to protect me," she said, suddenly unable now to stop talking. "I know that—that's why you've downplayed certain things because you think it would hurt me more than if I knew the truth. I know that's why you downplayed things with Hannah the night we came back, and I know that's why you downplayed things you did when you were deployed—"

Booth opened his mouth to object, but he was so shocked, he couldn't at that moment bring himself to even formulate a question or explain himself. Stunned, he could only nod for her to continue.

"And, the important part—the most important part of all as much as I can understand it—the part that you've got to understand is that the first time you did it, from an evidentiary standpoint, it could be considered an error that you made when you omitted or de-exaggerated certain things when you told me what happened when we were a part. But, tonight, Booth—" She stopped and bit her lip again as she looked away from him. "Tonight makes the third time that I've found out that you weren't as forthcoming as you should've been with me...and you can't put it off on me not asking, because I did ask after Hannah came back. That explanation might've been valid to explain why you weren't as open about the details of your relationship with her...even though I have to wonder if I ever would have found out about them if she hadn't shown up when she did." The details surrounding Booth's relationship with the blonde journalist were still a bit raw for Brennan, despite how they'd both worked hard to resolve the issue, she couldn't help herself as she tilted her head and asked, "Would I have?"

Booth looked away and rubbed his face in his hands. "Yes," he said. "Probably—I don't know." He paused and let out a heavy sigh before he returned his gaze to look at Brennan. "Look, we already talked about this, about how things were, and how I probably should've been more forthcoming about that, right?" He again sighed, feeling a sharp ache in his chest as his frustration mounted. "I thought we were through this part, Bones."

"So did I," she said. "But, it still seems to keep coming up for some reason, doesn't it?"

Shaking his head, Booth said, "This isn't any good, Bones. We can't keep rehashing the same ground here over and over again because there's no point to it. I came clean, alright? I fucked up, laid my cards on the table, and I thought we came to peace on that—on that whole...set of issues."

"But, did you really, Booth?" Brennan asked him as she blinked several times at him before she saw a look of slight confusion on his face indicate that he needed clarification. Nodding, she said, "That is, did you really 'come clean' about everything, Booth?"

"What do you mean?" he finally asked.

"You didn't really have any choice but to come clean about Hannah, right?" she replied. "Circumstances intervened to foreclose any other option but complete honesty on that front, but what about the rest of it, Booth? Did you really 'come clean' about everything else?"

Shaking his head, feeling it begin to pound a bit at the stress of their entire conversation, Booth suddenly couldn't help but feel that things were now less about Brennan and more about him. And, since he wasn't sure how, when, and why that subtle shift had occurred, he felt his ire grow a bit more. At a loss, he focused on the one clear example Brennan had given him—the blonde journalist he'd met in Afghanistan "What else is it that you think I should've told you, Bones?" he snapped. "What? Let's cut the bullshit out, huh? What are you really saying—do you think I've got some other secret blonde somewhere squirreled away for a rainy day when I'm bored that I'm hiding from you or something or what?"

Brennan narrowed her eyes and shot him a dark look, but held her tongue.

"Just what are you trying to say here, Bones?" he said, a bit of the fight going out of him when Brennan refused to rise to his bait.

She considered his words for a minute and then said, "Well, for starters, what about your injury?" She pointed in the vague direction of his chest where both of them knew that a very small scar continued to heal underneath his dress uniform. "I only found out about that because I saw the scar, Booth—"

"That was the night we got together, Bones," he said, his voice edged with exasperation. "We'd barely been together two hours after having been apart seven months. When was I supposed to have told you about that? Come on, now."

"That's a fair point," she admitted. "But, the fact is that you told me you were over there doing 'administrative' tasks and then proceeded to show me a photograph of you in which you were heavily armed. When we parted at Dulles, you promised me you wouldn't be a hero. But, seeing you in that photo, armed that way, and then seeing your injury, it's plain as the nose on my face that you lied because you didn't keep your promise."

"Now wait," he said, his voice edged with anger as he pointed his finger at her. "I made no such promise, Bones."

"Yes, yes you did," Brennan said, some of the passion that had been heretofore absent in her tone returning. "You did. Right before I left for Indonesia."

"No," Booth insisted. "No, I didn't. If you recall, you asked me to not be a hero, and I did my best, but I never made you any promises. I couldn't have made such a promise, Bones, because Lord knows I know that's not how the Army works—and it sure as hell isn't how Special Forces works."

"But—" Brennan began to interrupt.

"No," Booth said with a firm shake of his head. "No, I never made any promise like that to you, Bones, and here's how I know that. I never made any such promise because I never would've done something like that because of Parker."

"Parker?" Brennan asked, confusion coming into her eyes. "What does Parker have to do with any of this?"

"Before I went away, Parker asked me if I would be doing dangerous things and wanted me to promise him that I wouldn't do anything dangerous," Booth explained. "And, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't make him a promise to make him feel better because I knew it'd be a lie. So, if I couldn't make Parker a promise like that—when he's a child, looking for that kind of reassurance—why would I make a promise like that to you when I knew from the word go that it would be a lie since I knew I'd never be able to keep it in the first place?"

Brennan stared at Booth for several seconds before she let out a huff of exasperation. "Fine, Booth," she conceded after several tense seconds. "You're right. You didn't promise that."

"No," he confirmed. "I sure as hell didn't."

"My apologies," Brennan said, a bit of slight mocking coming into her tone of voice. "I guess I was conflating my hopes with what I'd hoped you promised me. But, be that as it may, the one thing that tonight showed me is that there is a lot about what happened to you in Afghanistan that I don't know anything about. And, knowing that, I can't help but wonder if there's more things you've hidden to me in lying by omission," she said.

Booth felt her accusation pierce him like a dagger. "What is it that you think I'm supposed to have told you, Bones?" he growled. "Huh? How's this supposed to work exactly? I don't understand how I'm supposed to figure out what part of seven and a half months of my life I'm supposed to have figured out you wanted me to tell you about."

"If it happened to you, Booth—if it affected you in some way, for instance by causing you pain or changing you in some way, then it affects me, because there is no 'you' and 'me' anymore, right?" she questioned him, causing Booth to feel both pride at her acknowledgement of their relationship status and a slight pang of annoyance at her seemingly using it against him in the same breath. "Isn't that what you said? You and I agreed that since we wanted to be together that we ceased to exist as separate entities. As such, if it affects you, it affects me, and I have a right to know what I'm dealing with, Booth. I just can't keep stumbling over these things. Don't you know how hard this is for me to do—cease to be an independent creature—even under the most optimum of circumstances?"

Booth felt another twitch of concern for her as he gentled his tone and tried to make her understand what he so desperately needed her to understand in that moment. "Bones, look—I've gone away to war before, and I've come home before," he said. "I'm doing what I've always done, which is leave the war back there, and do my best to make a fresh start back stateside. What happens over there, stays over there, okay? That's how I've always done it, and that's how it has to be."

She considered his words for several seconds before she nodded at him and said, "Booth, if the entire debacle with Hannah taught us anything, it's that your theory of 'what happens over there, stays over there' is a farce. It doesn't work that way. The past doesn't just stay in the past, does it? It's always with us," she said as she reached out and grabbed one of his hands and cradled it in her own. "All of it—it's always with us, Booth...those experiences that make us who we are, especially the kind of experiences that mark you physically, like your wounds, or those that change you in some other way. You may have been able to get away with the 'what happens over there, stays over there' strategy in the past, when you came home from war, because you had to. But, there's another option, now, right? You have me to help you, so let me help you because it's different now, isn't it?"

"Bones," Booth said, his voice soft as his warm brown eyes begged her to understand him. "Yes, of course it's different. And, I thank God every day for that difference. But—you and Parker, Bones—you two are the only things clean and pure in my life. I don't want to taint you with the ugliness, the darkness, or the evil I saw over there."

"I know you think you were justified in doing what you've done to this point to protect me," Brennan said quietly. "But, Booth, we both know how well that works when one of us takes away the right to choose from the other one. I did that to you once, before, remember? That night in front of the Hoover, I made a choice unilaterally that affected both of us, and I didn't give you any say in the matter because I thought I was protecting you. And, because I acted in such a dictatorial way, I ended up driving you back into the Army and everything I heard tonight happened because of that." She stopped, her throat constricting as she managed to eke out, "My God, Booth—if anything, everything that I heard tonight just made me realize how many times I almost lost you before I even really had you, and I'm so scared right now I can't even tell you, and those are only the things I know about—"

Booth grasped her slender, exposed shoulders with his large hands. "We've talked about this, Bones," he said. "You didn't make me reenlist. That was _my _decision, Bones. I own that decision, with all of its consequences. I don't blame you, alright? Come on. Don't blame yourself for the decisions I've made, okay, because it's—"

"Don't you dare try to take this on yourself," Brennan interrupted him with a sharp twist of her head. "You don't get to tell me how I feel, Booth...and I'll be damned if I'm going to let you try to ameliorate this situation simply with a 'we're here because of how we got here' and 'the past is just the past, so why dwell on it' slew of euphemisms, Booth. We've tried it your way for the past month. And, you know what? Everything that's happened...from me seeing your scar, to Hannah showing back up, to me finding out tonight about what you did when you were on active duty when they read that damn citation—you know what, Booth? It only proves one thing. You can't run from the past. The past is always with us. It _never _goes away. That ugliness, that darkness and evil you mentioned? You can't run away from it. You were you the one who told me we both have to stop running. Well, Booth—that ugliness and all of it, that you experienced over there—it's a part of who we are, who _you _are, and if you try to bury it and pretend it doesn't exist, it always, _always _comes back and bites you in the metaphorical ass until it's dealt with. So, you know what? We tried things your way, and obviously that's not working. So, now...now I think we need to try things _my_ way."

_Oh God, _he groaned silently. _She doesn't have any idea what she's asking, does she? _ Booth suddenly felt his heart start pounding in his chest, and he found himself, for a few moments, in another place and time.

_It was half past two in the afternoon, and Booth was laying on his belly behind the scope of his M14 rifle along a ridgeline on the edge of a thick forest in the Kosovar countryside. He lined up his shot, took a slow breath and held it for a second or two_—_just long enough to pull the trigger. The shot rang out, and as soon as his spotter got a visual confirmation on his hit, Booth jumped up, folded up his bipod, slung his rifle and his rucksack over his shoulder and began humping it back down the hill. Hank Lutrell and two other Rangers had been providing a security overwatch fifty or so meters from Booth's position, to make sure that the sniper team would be able to safely extricate themselves after taking out Radic. But, it turned out the intelligence was faulty, and a six-man Serb patrol passed through the area just before Booth took the fatal shot. When the shot rang out and killed Radic, the Serb soldiers heard the report and moved towards Booth's position. They encountered Hank and the two other Rangers in the process, and a firefight began. Surprised and outnumbered two to one, the experienced and expertly-trained Rangers still managed to neutralize the Serbs._

_Booth and his spotter came running after hearing the sound of a gunfight. Hank was laying on the ground, a rifle-caliber gun shot wound on his left hip with an exit wound in the small of his back. He had no feeling below the exit wound and couldn't walk. Booth handed his sniper rifle to his spotter and picked up Hank, carrying him on his back over a thousand meters to the extraction point. Another Serb patrol element, this one comprised of three men, passed nearby as the Rangers were en route to the extraction point. With Hank still on his back, Booth reached down and pulled his sidearm that was strapped to his thigh. He shot and killed two of the Serb soldiers—the third retreated into the forest. After the initial pulse of adrenaline washed through Booth's system, he felt a sharp burn in his lower back._

Closing his eyes to shake away the memory, Booth felt his jaw tense as he looked away. "What are you saying, Bones?" he asked, his words choked as the fear rose like bile in this throat. He turned and faced her again, unable to make eye contact as he looked vaguely at a random point just over her shoulder. "What are you saying here? What do you mean, 'everything?'"

"That means, full disclosure," she said quietly. "Everything, Booth."

"Everything," he whispered. _Everything?_

A kaleidoscope of images swirled in front of his mind's eye and Booth could hear only a dull roar in his ears as he tried to shove those images back into the attic of his mind. He saw the round belly of a Guatemalan rebel leader and the bottle of beer that spilled on it when Booth's high-velocity round knocked the man out of his chair, the horrified face of a seven year-old Serb boy whose T-shirt was splattered with his father's blood and brains, and the ashen face of Corporal Parker laying in the sand as the helicopter came to extract them after their failed mission in Iraq. _She wants to know everything, _Booth sighed. _What if I don't want to tell her everything? What if I can't? _All of a sudden, the fear and frustration that had been building inside of Booth bubbled up, leaving him for a few moments breathless, his heart pounding and a hard, painful lump forming in his throat. He looked away, squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds, then opened his eyes again, taking a deep breath as he tried to push away the lightheaded feeling that had just washed over him.

"_Everything?"_ he whispered. "Do you understand what—" He looked away again. "You don't really—do you understand what you're asking me, Bones? This isn't—this isn't some small little thing...you know that, right?"

"I do," she said with a slow nod of her head. "Everything is the totality of who you are, Booth—good and bad, light and dark—everything...so, yes, I know what that signifies for you."

"Bones," he said quietly, a wavering in his low voice. "I don't think you would ask me if you really understood what we're talking about here because...if you really want me to—look, opening up this can of worms about what I did in Afghanistan, it's not just an Afghanistan can of worms. If I open up that can, it's gonna open up a whole..." Booth sighed, rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, swallowed, then stared into his lap. Squirming against the seat, he continued. "If I open up that can, Bones, you know, it's gonna open up a whole Pandora's box of memories and shit that—stuff I've tried to keep shut away for ten, fifteen, some of it, almost twenty years." His mouth hung open as he looked up at her again. "All the things I've done," he said, his voice dropping once more to a whisper as he turned and glanced out the limo window. "And all the men I've killed." He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will away the lightheaded swirl he felt. "Do you understand what you're asking here, Bones? Do you?"

"Booth," Brennan said, reaching her hand out and placing her fingers on his thigh. She swallowed back a wince when she saw him flinch at her touch. "We need this...if we're going to truly have a shot at being together, then we have to deal with this—" She stopped, paused, and tried a different approach. "Once...not so long ago, I had to confront the experience of losing my parents, Booth. I had to face the hurt and pain and all the emotions I'd wrapped up in their abandonment of me and all the consequences I suffered because of that choice. And when I did that, there was a cost. I paid a price to do that. I don't regret it, and I'm not saying I would go back and do it differently, but there's always a price. And, Booth, I recognize that me confronting the consequences of that experience is not necessarily comparable to the experiences you've had in combat, or the ways those experiences have affected you in regard to your other past experiences in the military. But my point is, I know what I'm asking here, and I know there is a cost." She stopped again, took another breath, and said, "You were there for me when I was going through all of that horribleness with my parents and Russ and the foster system, and we weren't even in a relationship then. So, please—let me do this for you now. Let me be here for you—please, Booth. _Please_."

Booth let out another sigh. He looked up and met her questioning stare, and suddenly, he felt a flare of anger. _I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this, and she knows that, but she's still trying to make me do it. Why, damn it? Why? _"So, what are you saying here?" Booth asked glumly. "Is me telling you about all the shit that happened to me over going to be some kind of proof or sign of fidelity here? Is this some kind of test here, Bones?"

"Booth, I need to know—for _us_, you've got to tell me," she now pleaded with him.

Booth shifted in his seat, his shoulders slumping a bit at her words. "Fine, okay." Brennan's eyes lightened a bit with hope at his response. But, the hope quickly faded as he continued to speak. "Look, we can talk about this, alright," he said "But... not now. Not tonight, okay? I just can't—"

"Booth," she said. "Now who's the one who's in pain? Remember? 'Us' means it's a two-way street. Everything that happened to you happens to me and vice versa. Let me help you. I can't stand to see you hurting even more than you can stand to see me in pain."

"It's not the same, Bones," Booth said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's not—"

"Yes," she nodded. "Yes, it is. It's _exactly _the same thing. And, the fact of the matter is—whether you want to talk about it or not is that We need to talk about this. Here and now. Everything. All of it."

"Everything?" he repeated, his breath catching in his throat. He shook his head. "But, why?"

"Because," she told him. "Aside from all the other reasons I've given you, then how about this one, Booth—I-I...it pains me to admit this, but the evidence says that I've caught you in three separate instances where you haven't been completely honest with me. Three instances aren't exceptions...they're a pattern...and yes, I would be lying to you if I didn't say that a part of me questions if you're capable of telling me the truth."

"If I'm capable of telling you the truth?" he repeated. "I've never lied to you, Bones," he said, his low, broken voice nearly a growl. "How can you say that?" For several seconds his mouth hung open as he felt his eyes burn. "I—I can't believe you would think I would lie to you. After all—after everything that's happened between us...we've been partners for more than five years, Bones—why on earth why I start lying to you now? Do you honestly think I'd start lying to you now?" He paused and then felt a rush of anger as another thought occurred to him. "Or are you actually saying that you think I've been lying to you all along?"

Brennan refused to back down from Booth's angry gaze. "I don't know what to think at this point, Booth," she said evenly.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," he said, shifting in his seat as he inadvertently knocked her hand away in frustrated disbelief. "What a load of bullshit."

"I'm sorry," Brennan finally said after a few seconds of silence hung between them. "I'm sorry if saying that upsets you, Booth, but that's how I feel...and I'm just trying to be honest with you—like when I say I want you to be completely honest with me."

"Don't you trust me?" he croaked, finally picking up his glass of bourbon and taking a big swallow, wincing as the liquor burned its way down his throat. "This is ridiculous, Bones," he said. "Don't make this into a trust issue, Bones."

"It _is _a trust issue," she said firmly. She stopped, at another loss of how to proceed with Booth. Then, a thought occurred to her as she said, "Do you love me, Booth?"

Booth blinked. "Of course," he said instinctively, almost as if it were a reflex. "Of course I love you. How can you not know that?"

"I do know that," Brennan said as she softened her gaze at him. "I know it with every metaphorical fiber of my being. But, you're the one who told me you can't have love without trust, Booth," she said. "You need to trust me enough to tell me the truth. That's what I've tried to do here, Booth. And .I hope that you'll have enough love and respect for me—like I do for you—to finally tell me the truth."

_This is not happening,_ Booth told himself. _Oh, God. She's right. Shit_—

"What are you saying here, Bones?" he asked her, cocking his head at an angle as he stared into her pale gray eyes. "You seriously want me to tell you everything about what happened to me over there?"

"Yes," she said quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Everything."

Booth swallowed hard, leaning back against the seat and looking up at the limo's headliner as he exhaled sharply. "Do you...do you understand what you're asking?" he said, repeating an earlier question.

"Yes," she replied. She gazed at him in silence for a moment, then added, "But, you have to understand something, Booth. You told me you laid your cards on the table, Booth—right?"

"Yes," he whispered, unsure where she was going with this.

"There have been a hundred times in the last month that I've wanted to run away. I can't even tell you how many times I wanted to leave...from the night when you told me about your injury to the day in the park when Hannah came back. But I stopped running, Booth. I stopped running. I went against my instincts, and I stayed and faced up to what was in front of me even though it almost killed me. And, if I had to do it for us, _because _of us, then you need to do the same, Booth. You need to stop running, too."

"I don't understand," he said. "What is it you think I'm running from, Bones?"

"You told me yourself, Booth: the ugliness, the darkness, the evil you saw over there," Brennan said. "Fine. If you really want an opportunity to lay all your metaphorical cards on the table than here it is."

"But I—"

Shaking her head, Brennan said, "The choice, of course, is yours, Booth. Just like it was my choice to tell you or not what was bothering me earlier. Yes, you pressed me—but, ultimately, the choice was mine. And, I made it because it needed to be done, and I loved you, and you asked me. So, I did it. Well, like I said, Booth—it's a two-way street. The same goes for you, you know that, right? You need to tell me, and I hope that because I've asked you and because you love me that it's enough for you to tell me what you need to tell me."

"I don't even know where I would start," Booth said after almost a few moment of silence passed between them. "I don't—"

"Why don't you start with the parts that you've purposely kept from me," Brennan said quietly. "If you want me to stop having doubts, to stop feeling skeptical, then here it is. Here's your chance, Booth."

Shaking his head, Booth said, a touch of anger coming into his voice, "And, why do I suddenly feel like I'm being tested here, Bones?"

"Because," she nodded at him. "In a way, you are."

"Why?" Booth snapped. "Why do you feel you need to test me?"

"For starters," Brennan said slowly. "Because I found out how you got the nickname 'Amp' on your last deployment." She stopped and tilted her head at him. "Captain Robinson kindly informed me this evening."

Booth paled a bit at her words and then swallowed once. _Shit. She knows about that_—_what else does she know about?_

Reading his body language, Brennan nodded, "So, I'm sorry if you think I'm testing you, but in a way, I suppose I am."

Sighing, he looked away and said, "I really don't have a choice in this, do I, Bones?"

"You always have a choice, Booth," Brennan said, purposely echoing his earlier words. "I would never compel you to do something you didn't want to do, but—this is it, Booth—after tonight...if I find out anything else that you've kept from me...there's no going back from this. If...I'm giving you the chance to tell me, honestly and truly anything you need to tell me because I love you, you should know that love only goes so far...so, just in the interests of fair disclosure...this is a one-time opportunity. If we leave this limo, and I find out later that you lied to me when I gave you the chance to tell me the truth—" Brennan thought back to Captain Robinson's reference to the tinnitus her partner manifested in the week following the IED explosion that he'd glossed over for her benefit. "I don't want to stumble on any more surprises, Booth. I can't."

"Holy Mary, mother of God," Booth whispered, staring at the cuff of his uniform jacket and the four gold service stripes sewn there. "I was in Afghanistan for seven months, Bones. You seriously want me to tell you everything that happened to me over a seven-month period?" he asked, his voice taut with disbelief. "You want me to tell you about every meal I had in the enlisted mess? Every shower I took? Every game of pickup basketball I played on my days off? Every night I had trouble falling asleep or woke up in the middle of the night?" His words came hard and fast, his frustration and reluctance evident in the way he seemed to bite each phrase.

"When we were apart," Brennan said slowly. "For those months when I was in Indonesia and you were in Afghanistan—I dreaded falling asleep every night. I...I-I hated going to sleep because every time I did, I'd dream of you, Booth," Brennan explained. "I dreamed of you—what you looked like and what you sounded like. I dreamed of your smile and your laugh and your voice and what your hair felt like when I ran my fingers through it. I imagined how you tasted when you kissed me and what it felt like when your fingers would dance across my skin when you'd touch me. And, every time I woke up and you disappeared back into my dreams, I started to cry because I was afraid I'd never get a chance to see how my dreams compared to reality." She stopped and then said, "And, so every moment when I couldn't distract myself with work, I was dealing with the pain of losing you in both my conscious and unconscious minds. I thought of you all the time, Booth. And, so, while it was to varying degrees to be sure, we all were in our own metaphorical hells while we were apart, Booth. So, if I can tell you about mine...shouldn't you be able to tell me about yours if we're ever really going to have a solid chance at making our relationship work?"

He stayed his hand in that moment, even though he desperately wanted to reach out to her. Instead, he said softly, "Bones—"

"Please, Booth," she pleaded with him. "Tell me."

"Which part?" he asked finally. "You want to know what my metaphorical hell was like, Bones—is that it? You just really want to know the grim, lurid details, huh?" He drew a deep sigh. "That's what we're talking about here, really—isn't it? You want to know about every man I saw get killed? Every man I saw blown to smithereens on the side of the road? Every man I saw get hurt or maimed? What about the men _I _killed, the ones _I _hurt or maimed? You really want to know about all those?" His right eye twitched as he paused, trying to calm down. "You want to know about all the times I could've gotten killed? Or hurt?" He sat up straighter against the seat back as he drained the rest of the glass of Jim Beam. "What do you want to know, Bones? What do you need to know? Give me a little guidance here...because you know I can't possibly tell you 'everything' that happened in the seven months we were apart."

Brennan swallowed, her jaw tight as she listened to him. Finally, she nodded at him and said, "Okay, Booth. How about we start chronologically at the beginning, and you tell me all the times when it was a statistical probability that you could've been grievously wounded or killed?" She stopped and then said, turning her eyes away from him, "How about the ones where, if but for a bit of luck or a small variable, you might've died, and some soldier in a U.S. Army uniform would've come to find me with the news of what'd I'd finally done." She paused again, and her voice as so low that she didn't even know if Booth could hear her as she asked, "Can you even imagine what that would've done to me, Booth? Do you know what receiving news like that would've done to me?"

"Bones—" he said. "I—"

"I'm not telling you to make you feel badly," Brennan said. "I'm just saying so that you understand, Booth—"

He sucked in a long, deep breath and pressed his palms against the sides of his forehead as he exhaled. "Fine. Then, let's start with the encounter you heard about tonight," he said. "You heard how I led those men in assaulting insurgent positions, right? Obviously, that was some pretty dangerous shit. We were assaulting those positions because they were shooting at us from those positions. The only way to get them to stop was to bring the fight to them. So I, together with those men, left our places of safe cover—some of which weren't very safe, as it turned out—and we rushed out into the open, attacking those insurgent positions. I could've been shot or killed doing that." Booth squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will away the burn he felt in his eyes. He swallowed hard and continued. "Some of the men I was with did get shot when we did that. A couple of them did get killed."

"How many?" Brennan asked, surprised as the words left her mouth.

"Of the sixty-nine men in the company," he said, "three were KIA." He didn't explain what KIA meant, because he knew full well that she knew the term from the times she'd worked with the U.S. military identifying servicemembers' bodies. "Six more were wounded, four of those men very badly." Taking another long breath, Booth continued. "One of the worst was the acting Afghan company commander, Dawar."

"That's the same name as—"

Booth nodded. "Yeah, Lieutenant Ashraf Dawar—he's the nephew of the Afghan defense minister, the guy that was up there tonight helping give me the Silver Star. Though no one would tell me this when I was over there, I'm pretty sure that's how he got the job as acting company commander. He's a twenty-one, twenty-two year old kid, right? Well, anyway, he flipped out. We were—me and the men of that ANA company got caught in a bad position along a street adjacent to a square, within range of an insurgent position that was defiladed." He saw a blank look overtake her eyes and explained, "A defiladed position is one that is shielded by some kind of obstacle. In this case, the defilade was provided by a series of hand-dug irrigation canals concealed with thick vegetation."

Brennan gave a short nod. "Yes," she said. "Please—go on."

"We couldn't get a good bead on them from where we were, but they had an open shot at part of our position. One of our guys, a young kid who'd just joined the ANA company a week or two before, got hit, right in the neck, and I guess the round severed the carotid artery or something, because he bled out real quick." He snapped his finger for emphasis. "You know, right there in front of the lieutenant, before anyone could figure out how to help him." Booth shook his head at the memory. "And—"

"How far away were you from this?" Brennan asked.

He chewed the inside of his lip. "Maybe thirty, forty feet away," he answered. "So this Lieutenant Dawar, he flipped out. Just froze, basically. I told him we needed to move the men out of our enfiladed, exposed position to a better position, which required us to temporarily move right out into the open, of course—"

"Of course," she repeated grimly.

Booth frowned. "Look, you know how this works, right?" he snapped back, immediately regretting the angry tone he'd just taken with her. He sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, then continued. "Like anything else in life, right, sometimes you have to take risks in order to manage other risks. Combat is the same way—it's just that the risks are really fucking significant. As in, people can die. Sometimes you have to risk losing some of your guys for the greater good of the unit. That's combat, Bones. And in this case, if we didn't step out into the open for a minute to move the company to a better position, risking having some of our guys shot in the process, we were all gonna get torn apart by small-arms fire from that defiladed insurgent position."

"Okay," she said quietly. "Then what happened?"

"So Lieutenant Dawar wasn't responding to my request that he move the company," Booth explained. "I mean, it's his unit, right—theoretically, I was merely an advisor, right?—but when it became clear that the lieutenant had totally lost his shit, and it was obvious that he wasn't going to do anything, meanwhile we're getting shot at from this enemy position, I had to do something." He reached for the bottle of Jim Beam and refilled his glass almost to the brim.

"What did you do, Booth?" Brennan pressed him.

"I grabbed my rifle and ran from one end of the street to the other end where Dawar was," he said, punctuating his statement as he took his glass and downed a large gulp of bourbon. His nostrils flared as the vapors hit the back of his throat. "I stepped out into the open—I had no choice, really, because most of the men were over by him, and the only way I could get them moved was to move my ass over there to assume control of things, you know—personally."

"You exposed yourself?" she asked, lowering her head and averting her gaze as she waited for the answer she already knew.

"Yeah," Booth admitted. "I got shot at." He set his glass down on his thigh. "I heard the bullet go over my shoulder as I hit the deck, just as I got to the end of the street where Dawar and most of the men were. It took a big ol' chunk out of the mud-brick wall behind me. Had I been a second slower, I'd have been hit. But if me and those sixty-nine guys had stayed where we were, we'd might all have been casualties. Somebody had to assume control and—"

Brennan raised her eyes. "Of course," she said. Booth was unsure if the twinge he heard in her voice was anger, regret or sarcasm. "So you risked your life, then—"

"Yes," he whispered. "It happened a number of times while I was over there, Bones. Do you want to hear about those other times, too?"

Brennan's face paled at his admission, but she shook her head. "Was that the worst thing you did?"

"What do you mean, Bones?" he asked, mindlessly rotating the tumbler in half-circles against the smooth gabardine weave of his trousers. "Do you mean, did I ever do anything where I put myself more at risk than I did in that moment?"

She nodded silently.

"Look," he began again. "I'm not going to lie to you, Bones. I found myself in danger on some of those missions I did over there when I was with that Afghan company, alright? A lot of it wasn't much more dangerous than the kind of thing you've seen me do here—chasing armed bad guys through back-alleys and so forth, but—"

"But, what?" she pressed him, a raw edge of frustration in her voice as she dreaded what he was about to tell her. _Is that the worst of it, Booth? Is it? Honestly? Or, do I need to brace myself for something worse, much worse that you did to almost get yourself killed because of what I did to you_—

"But that particular day, that was a crazy ass day," he explained. "I did a lot of shit that day that I normally didn't really have to do, you know, because when that Afghan lieutenant flipped out and lost his shit, the sixty-eight other guys in that unit were basically left without any competent leadership." Booth hesitated under Brennan's withering glare. "Now, the ANA is far from squared away. At times, it's damn near the Keystone Cops: chaotic, poorly-led, without a clearly-articulated mission or chain-of-command. But it was never, never as bad as it was that one day. That citation you heard, Bones, it made it seem like I was in charge of that company, but—" He hesitated again. "The citation omitted the fact that the ANA company had a commander, on the ground, on the scene, but because that kid has a powerful uncle—whose continued support and cooperation with U.S. and coalition forces is needed to keep the whole situation over from devolving into complete and utter chaos—well, it's for that reason that Lieutenant Dawar's name doesn't appear once in my citation. The Afghan Defense Minister would not have viewed kindly the U.S. Army publicizing the fact that his nephew faltered under fire. The fact is, had he been capable of leading his men, I wouldn't have had to."

"But, you would have still been there, wouldn't you?" she questioned him. "You would still have been there, running into those same extremely dangerous situations and everything, right?"

"In a sense, yes," Booth admitted. "But in another sense, _no_. Two things: first, we sat there on that street, crouched against a mud-brick wall on the side of a square, exposed to insurgent fire, for damn near two minutes while I waited for Lieutenant Dawar to do something." Brennan blinked, tilting her head slightly as she tried to understand where he was going with this. "A lot can happen in two minutes in a combat situation, alright? Had we redeployed to a different position as soon as the insurgents started firing on us, we would not have found ourselves on the defensive, without momentum, behind the eight-ball, as they say. But we lost precious time and momentum, while the insurgents acquired momentum and kept the advantage, and by the time that new kid, Afridi, got it and two other guys got hit, we had no choice but to do something drastic. Second, the only way to get those boys to move was to drag 'em with me. I had to lead from the front on this one, Bones. I had no choice, really, because the guys were so freaked out, under fire from an insurgent position they could barely see and couldn't hit without stepping out into the line of fire, and without any leadership—"

"I'm not sure I understand your point, Booth," she said, her brow furrowed in confusion.

Booth sighed and rubbed his eyes. "What I'm saying is, we had a finite amount of time under those circumstances, early on in the course of events that day, to keep a bad situation from getting worse, and had that unit had effective leadership from the get-go, the situation would not have evolved into the shitstorm that it did."

Brennan nodded slowly. "So, under those circumstances, you're saying that the only effective leadership that was available was yours."

"Yes," he confirmed. "And those kids—the guys in that company—after seeing the new kid killed, two other guys hit pretty bad, and their commanding officer freak out right in front of them, it demoralized them. The only way I was going to be able to get those guys to move and turn things around was to lead from the front." Booth pursed his lips and stared out the window for several long moments. "So, yeah, did I run out ahead of the rest of the unit and do the stuff that they said I did?" He shrugged and then turned back to look his partner in the eyes. "Yeah, basically I did. But it wasn't like every day I was over there was like that. That was a pretty uniquely fucked up day and I had to do some pretty crazy-ass things just to get through—and get my guys through—that day."

Brennan sat there, silent, as Booth continued to fuss with his empty glass that he had somehow completely drained dry in the telling of his story.

"That was the worst, Bones," he said. "I swear. There were other close calls—times I could've gotten killed being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the one time I missed being blown up by a car bomb only because I'd been called away to mediate an internecine squabble between two ANA units, the U.S. Army and a Danish recon platoon—but in terms of me, putting myself out there into a situation where I knew I'd be risking my life, the worst, craziest things I did over there was the shit I did that day."

"Booth," she said, wanting desperately to touch him, but afraid of how'd she'd react if he knocked her hand away again. "Are you sure?"

He set the empty bourbon glass to the side and reached for her hand. "As God is my witness, Bones," he said, his voice heavy and firm. "That's the bravest, nuttiest-ass shit I did," he said earnestly. "That's why they gave me the Silver Star. People only get things like that when they do crazy brave stuff. Normal, being unlucky-and-in-danger stuff, like finding yourself standing near IEDs and car-bombs, they give out Purple Hearts for that when you're unlucky, but they don't give out awards for valor or gallantry unless you do crazy brave stuff. And the craziest stuff I did over there was the stuff you heard about tonight. I told you the bit that didn't make it into my citation for political reasons. So...now you know the whole story."

"What happened to the lieutenant?" Brennan suddenly asked him. "I mean, you mentioned he got severely wounded."

"Oh," Booth mumbled. "He got shot when we were advancing through the canals—he took a large-caliber machine gun round to the leg. When we got him back to an aid station, it was obvious that the bone and tissue damage in his lower leg—"

"His tibia, and the—?"

"Yes," Booth nodded. "And all the muscles, blood vessels and stuff—it was too severe. He got hit with the equivalent of a fifty-caliber round, the kind of thing used to take out vehicles, armor, aircraft, shit like that, and for long-distance sniper kills. Human bodies don't handle fifty-cal rounds very well. His leg was amputated by surgeons at the Marine Corps Medical Battalion facility down the road."

Brennan sighed. "You're sure?" she asked. "That is, you're certain there's nothing else, no other occasions where you—?"

Booth held up his hand, interrupting her. "I told you, I swear that's the worst of it, in the sense that you mean." He squeezed her hand in his. "Bones, I'm not going back. You know that, right? I'm not going back there, and I'm not going back into the Army. Period, full stop." He smiled sweetly. "My life is here, with you, and with Parker."

Brennan winced slightly, a fleeting expression that Booth immediately noticed.

"Wait," he said. "Why did you just do that?"

"Do what?" she asked, her voice faint.

"That look—why did you just get that look on your face...wait...you don't think I'm going to leave you, do you?" he asked her. "You know... no matter how hard they tried, you know I'd never gonna let those guys talk me into staying in, and going back to Afghanistan, or wherever, right, Bones? Because—"

"Of course I'm scared I'm going to do something that will drive you back into the Army, Booth," she said, tears beginning to prick at her eyes a bit once more as she felt the emotional exhaustion of the evening and their conversation coming to bear fully on her at last. "After everything that I've learned tonight, how could I not consider that possibility?" She paused and shook her head. "I did it once before. I'm...I know it very well might happen again. So, how can you possibly promise me that you'll never go back in? You can't know that—"

In theory, Booth knew, she was right, but for the wrong reasons. He was working on trying to find a way to have his status in Individual Ready Reserve permanently deferred, with help from the higher-ups in the FBI helping him make the case that he could do more for his country in D.C. than he could over there, but that wasn't yet a done deal. He could feel the tears coming by the way his eyes burned and the tickle in his nose. "I'm not going back," he told her. "Not in a million fucking years. It's been a month, Bones. Do you know how many times some SF guy has called or come by the Hoover to ask me to stay in?" She said nothing in reply, but shook her head very slightly. "Six times, not counting tonight when that three-star General Phillips and his cronies started laying it on thick. They can have the damn President of the United States call me personally to ask, and I'm still not gonna do it. I'm not fucking going back. They can send me to fucking Fort Leavenworth for all I care, but I'm not going back over there. I'm not leaving Parker again, and now I've got you, and I'm not—"

"I know that you love Parker," she nodded. "I know that. But, you loved him before you left, and you still went once before...because of what I did to you. Your love for Parker wasn't enough to outweigh the hurt and pain I caused you, so of course I would be a fool if I didn't consider the opportunity happening again."

"Listen to me," Booth said, bringing her hand up and holding it between his. "Listen to me very carefully, alright?" He narrowed his eyes as he pulled her hand close to his mouth so she could feel his breath on her fingers as he spoke. "I'm not going back in. There's no goddamn way, okay? It's not gonna happen. That's what I've told them the last six times they've asked me about going back in, and that's the bottom friggin' line, okay?" He took a deep breath and tried to release some of the pent-up tension as he exhaled. "Bones, I'm not going anywhere. I love you, and you love me, right?"

"Yes, I love you," she said. "But, me loving you isn't the issue here. It's a question of me not trusting myself not to hurt you again—I don't trust me not to drive you away again."

"What?" he squeaked. "Wait, what are you talking about?"

"I know it doesn't make any sense, me feeling this way, but—"

"Bones," Booth said, his voice soft and smooth, like suede. "What happened back then, Bones, that night at the Hoover—that won't ever happen again. The people we were back then, the person _you_ were back then, doesn't exist anymore. Right? You told me that earlier. What happened before, it won't happen again." He stopped, pursed his lips and smiled at her. "We weren't in sync then, Bones, you know? We weren't in sync in our own minds about the feelings we had about each other, and we weren't in sync with each other. But we're in sync now. We're finally on the same page, so to speak. I love you, and you love me—and each of us knows that the other person loves them. What happened before, between us, won't happen again—"

"I hear what you're saying," she said, her voice strained. She turned away slightly and sighed quietly, then turned back and looked up at her partner expectantly. "But, how can you be sure, Booth? You also told me that we're the sum of the whole of what we've done, where we've been, and who we were. It doesn't go away. And, so while I may not be the same woman who broke your heart that night, she's still a part of me—I didn't just cut her out of my personage and she ceased to exist. And, since she's still a part of me, how can you be certain that I won't—"

Booth smiled and squeezed her hand again, curling his long, thick fingers around her slender ones. "Because I love you, and you love me, and we both know we love each other, and that means we'll work through our challenges, Bones, our rough patches—whatever they are." He lowered his head and brushed his lips across her fingers. "Just like tonight, right?" Booth saw the uncertainty in her eyes and felt a burning in his nostrils as his eyes began to water. "Even the tough stuff, Bones. We can figure it out. I know it." He stroked his thumb over her index finger. "You won't drive me away, Bones, because I won't let you. So, you've got to stop being afraid and wallowing in this guilt of yours. You've got to let it go, Bones, because there's no point to it. It serves no purpose except to allow you to keep punishing yourself, and I can't let that happen anymore, because you don't deserve it. You haven't done anything wrong, and so you've got to let it go."

Brennan shook her head. "But, I—"

He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles gently. "Listen to me," he said. "Rationally, when you screw up in the lab, what do you do?"

"Assess the situation, determine why I made the error, learn what I can from the situation, and then attempt not to repeat the mistake," Brennan said instantly.

"Then, why can't you do that here?" Booth asked. "We've assessed the situation, you know why you screwed up, you took from it what you could, and you've done a pretty good job over the last month making sure you didn't let the same thing happen again."

Brennan stopped and then thought about what he had said before she nodded slowly, "You're right."

"Then, can you trust me when I tell you that I'm not going away, okay? I'm not going back, no matter what. I've spent more than enough time deployed, away from my son, and I've given more than my share of sacrifice for this country, okay?" He shrugged. "Even if there weren't an _us, _Bones, I wouldn't be going back in. And now—now that I've got you _and _Parker, the two most important people in my life—there's nothing that's gonna tear me away from you two. _Nothing. _A herd of wild mustangs couldn't drag me away from you two, okay? My life's here now, and I'm not going anywhere, baby." He kissed her fingertips and a grin spread across his lips. "You're stuck with me, Bones. I'm in for the long haul." He laughed softly. "Right," he said, kissing her fingers again, "here, with you. Always."

Brennan tried to pull her hand away but Booth wouldn't release his grip. "I want to believe that, Booth," she said sniffling slightly in spite of herself. "But, I just don't have the faith that you do."

"Bones," Booth began. "If you love me and you trust me, then I don't understand. Why can't you—?"

"Because, I can't, Booth!" Brennan said. "I just can't. It's illogical, and it's irrational, and I know that, but I can't help it. The only way that I know how to combat that illogical and irrational set of feelings is with firm and unassailable proof to the contrary. If you want me to have faith in what you say, fine. Then, I need some type of proof—that's what I need from you. I need something that's incontrovertible, but that's the rub because I know you can't give me anything that would come remotely close."

"Bones—"

"I mean, I've thought about it all night, Booth, and after all of that, I know that there's nothing that you can possibly say or do that will make this better." She stared at him directly, her bright eyes full of swirling emotions. "The simple fact of the matter is that there's nothing that you can say or do that would be enough to provide enough evidence to counteract my feelings of pessimism in this. If I drove you away once before, it can happen again. That's the simple, logical fact of it, and there's nothing you can do that would possibly say otherwise—"

"Marry me, Bones," he said, nearly blurting out the words as he felt his heart stop. "Marry me."

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><p><strong>-TBC-<strong>

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><p><strong>AN2**: This is the fourth of five parts in this story. The fifth and final part...and the primary reason why this piece was given an M-rating (and where the true similarities to the movie mentioned in the author's note) finally come into play will be available in short order. However, as I mentioned before...this wasn't just an emotionally draining couple of chapters for both B&B...but for us writers, too. So... let us know how we did...an emotionally confused and overwhelmed guilty Brennan conversing with an equally emotionally overwhelmed and exasperated Booth is no easy thing (as evidenced by the fairly unexpected note this chapter ended on...we bet you weren't expecting _that_, were you? No doubt, neither was Brennan...or, perhaps, Booth)...but we hope you thought it turned out okay like we did. However, we won't know unless you tell us, so please feel free to click that review button below. Many thanks in advance!~


	5. Part V: Irrefutable Evidence

**Seeing the Monuments**

**By**: Lesera128 & _dharmamonkey_

**Rated**: M

**Disclaimer**: We still don't own anything...and it's still pretty obvious that we don't—at least to us. And, yes, our permanent mailing address has now been changed to the sandbox—you know which one.

**Summary**: Booth is honored for valor in Afghanistan at a formal banquet, Brennan attends, guilt rears its ugly head, and Booth has to resort to drastic measures in the limo on their ride home to get rid of Brennan's melancholy. Sequel to "When She Ran Away." Set during early season 6. Very AU, and very, very M.

**A/N**: This story is a sequel to "When She Ran Away." It's set approximately two weeks after the conclusion of that story. It was inspired, in part, by the opening ten minutes of the 1987 movie "No Way Out." Similarities between the opening scenes of that movie and this fic are most likely deliberate.~

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><p><strong>Part V: Irrefutable Evidence<strong>

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><p>Brennan blinked at Booth once in response, not quite certain that what she thought she'd heard him say was actually what he said. The shock was clearly evident on her face as she considered his words. At last, in a slightly delayed response, Brennan asked him, "What?"<p>

"Marry me," he said again, his breath catching in his throat. However, as he held her gaze he felt a warmth begin to grow in the pit of his stomach and quickly spread to the rest of his body. Nodding at her, he said firmly, "I want to marry you."

"What did you say?" she asked again, still looking at him as if he was speaking a foreign language that she'd never even heard before, let alone understood. "I-I...I'm sorry...but, what did you say?"

"I love you, Bones," he said, his voice thick with feeling. "I love you more than anything in the world. And, I want to wake up with you every morning and fall asleep with you in my arms every night. I want you to know I'll always be here for you, standing with you, standing next to you, standing up for you, from now and for the rest of our lives. I'm here, I'm not going anywhere, and I'll never leave you. I want you to be my wife, so—marry me, Bones. _Marry me_."

"Wait," she said, making a face contorted in painful confusion. _Why would you ask me that, Booth? Out of all the possible things you could do or say, why would you ask me __that__ question now? Why? I don't understand_—_I just don't understand... _"Wait, just please wait a minute."

"Bones," he said, almost too afraid to ask the next question because he wasn't sure how he'd handle the answer. "What is it?"

Shaking her head, she seemed to be struggling with a myriad of feelings and emotions as they randomly crossed her face. At last, she lifted her conflicted gaze to him and said, "I just—why would you bring that up now? What does that have to do with anything? Why would...I just don't understand, Booth. I don't understand."

Booth leaned forward and released her hand, then brought his hands up to cup her jaw, gently yet firmly pulling her face towards his. "You don't understand why I asked you to marry you, or you don't understand why I want to marry you in the first place?"

"Either," she gulped. "Or, both. I—"

" I love you, Bones, and if we've learned anything in the last year, having to be apart like we were, I like to think that it's that we know that we're better together than we are apart," he stopped and waited to make certain that he had her complete attention and understood the gravity of his words. When she stared at him, her lip trembling slightly, she nodded her silent agreement. "And I also think that if we've learned anything in the last month, it's that when we're together, _really _together, it's incredible the kind of happiness we can have, no matter what kind of craziness the world out there throws at us." He brought his lips to hers and kissed her in that moment to remind her of what was only a small fraction of the joy they'd shared in the past month. Closing his lips around her lower one, he teased it lightly with his tongue before reluctantly pulling away again. "I want to be your husband, Bones. I want to make you happy—tonight, tomorrow, and every day after that, for the rest of our lives, Bones." He kissed her again, this time letting his lips linger against hers as he felt them quiver beneath his touch. "Marry me."

"But—I don't understand," she said again, her mouth hanging slightly open as her breaths rose and fell jaggedly in response to his kiss and his sudden proposal. "Why?" she asked.

"Why?" Booth gasped with an awkward laugh. "Because—" He cocked his head to one side and looked at her with an unsuppressible grin. "Because you're my everything, Bones. Because you're the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. Because I know that having you in my life makes me a better man than I would be without you. Because I know that, with you in my life, by my side, I'll be happy, no matter what happens around us. And because—well, not to sound too cocky or presumptuous about it, Bones, but—I have a pretty good feeling that the same is true for you." He brought his hand up and caressed the side of her face with the back of his hand. "I think I make you happy." He stopped and smiled at her. "Can you honestly tell me that I don't make you happy, Bones? Do you believe that your life is better with me in it, than it was before...or not?"

"Yes," she whispered. "Of course, you make me happy. You make me happier than I ever thought I could be, and I don't think I can possibly verbalize to you how much my life has improved because of knowing you, but—but, Booth, how can you be sure that, us staying together...being together...how can you be sure that I won't hurt you again?"

Booth stroked her cheekbone with his thumb and then gently brushed the underside of her chin with the flat of his fist. "I can't be sure about that, Bones," he shrugged, his eyebrows raised and an open-mouthed smile on his face. "People who love each other, who share their lives together as husband and wife—well, sometimes they hurt each other." He leaned in even closer so that his forehead touched hers. "In fact, hurting each other from time to time is almost inevitable."

He winced lightly when he heard Brennan's sharp intake of breath at his words.

"But—listen," he said, turning her face to his despite her attempt to move away from him. "The thing is, Bones, when you make a commitment to share your life with another person, you make a commitment that you'll work through difficulties, together, as a team. You...well, not to put too fine a point on it, but you just keep doing what we've already been doing for the past month—we stop running and confront whatever needs to be confronted and deal with it...together. And, Bones, if there's one thing that you and I are really good at, it's being a team. We can do anything together. I love you, Bones, and I believe in you, and I'd never give up on you, or on us—and I think you feel the same way about me. Right?"

"I-I..."

"Bones...it's an easy question," he said gently. "Don't make this more complicated than it needs to be. It's just a simple yes...or no. Do you feel the same way about me as I feel about you?"

"Yes, of course," she finally said. "But, Booth," she said, twisting a little against him but not pulling away. "I just don't understand. How can you know you want to marry me? We've only been in a relationship for a month, Booth."

He laughed softly, pulled away a little from her, and then lifted his head to kiss her on the forehead again. "Bones, we've been in a relationship for years. It's just that it took us five years to start having sex." He grinned. "Not that we haven't definitely made up for lost time in that department," he noted with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows. "But, seriously, though—think about it. We've been close for years, right? We've always been good friends...probably best friends, if we were honest about it. Before that night at the Hoover, and all the crazy stuff that came after it—before that night, we spent almost all our time together. We ate most of our meals together, spent most of our days together, and even spent time together on our days off. We had keys to each other's apartments, I told Parker's school you were authorized to pick him up if for some reason if neither Rebecca nor I could, we have medical powers of attorney for each other. I know how you like your coffee, and you know which cereals I like best in the morning even if you hate their awesome sugary goodness. I buy that more expensive organic crap that you love at the more hoity toit store, and you've always kept a six-pack of Yuengling in your refrigerator for me before we were even dating. I know your favorite season is fall, and you know my favorite holiday is Christmas. We both know where all the skeletons are buried in our fucked-up family histories...and, mean, think about it. All that stuff? We may've just started, you know...sleeping together and calling ourselves an _us, _but we're not exactly like a couple who just started dating." He paused for a breath and then smiled at her. "We're more than that...so much more, Bones."

"Okay," she said with a slight nod at him. "That's true. But, you can't blame me for being suspicious of the timing of your proposal, Booth, coming when it did. I mean...how do I know you're not just proposing to assuage your own negative feelings that were raised by this evening's difficult discussion topics or to make me feel better since you know I've been upset because of said discussions?"

"What?" Booth shook his head incredulously. "Why would you even—?" He shook his head again and laughed. "Okay, Bones. God, you're a crazy woman sometimes...but, I'll play along. You want to know how you can know?"

She nodded her head at him in response.

"Okay, there here goes—you can know for certain because you know I'm smart enough to know that neither of those would even work."

Brennan looked at him blankly. "What?"

"First, I can't lie...in the past hour we've dealt with some pretty heavy shit, but...it's not like I don't feel about most of those things now the way I felt about those things this morning, you know. Those types of feelings don't just change on a dime like that...and, well... unless I'm missing something really important here, I don't get how me proposing to you would make me feel less any less guilty or what...feelings like those don't just go away. At best, me proposing to you would be a minor distraction in the grand scheme of things. So, that nixes that one right?" he asked her.

Brennan considered his words before she slowly nodded.

"Right," he said, cocking his head with a faint smile. "And, so...second, I think we both know that me asking you to marry me as a way of cheering you up would not, in fact, make you feel better—if anything, if you thought that's what I was actually doing, you'd give me one of your famous squint smackdowns, and we both know that I'd be toast." He grinned, then reached for her hands again. Looking up at her, his grin faded for a moment. "And third—well, this maybe the most important one of all...but, I think you know me well enough, Bones, to know I wouldn't just use the idea of marriage as some kind of pawn in a game of emotional chess. It means too much to me...you know that right?"

She thought about that for a minute before she nodded. "That's probably true," Brennan admitted. "But, still—"

"Bones?"

"Yes, Booth?" she replied softly.

"You know," he said quietly, a soft smile on his lips. "That underneath all this, whether I'm wearing all this get-up, or my standard-issue FBI suit, or sweats and an old T-shirt—I'm the same guy, right? The underlying architecture of who I am—it's all the same. The rest of this stuff," he gestured at the uniform as he continued, "it's just window dressing." He grinned at her, wondering if she remembered the conversation they had all those years before, sitting on the steps of the Jeffersonian with the squints eating lunch in the middle of the Cleo Eller case. "I'm still the same guy."

"Then why do you find it necessary to refer to yourself as a soldier?" Brennan suddenly asked him, her head snapping up to meet his gaze. Her eyes burned brightly as she asked the question, alerting Booth to some of the strong emotions that obviously prompted the question. "You've done it at least twice that I remember this evening, Booth—and not in a situation that required reference to your military background since you were just talking to me in both instances."

He thought about it for a moment and then nodded at her, knowing she needed him to be as honest as possible in that moment. "You'll probably think it foolish if I told you," he said.

"After all the things we've just covered in the past hour, I don't think there's much we can discuss that I would ever judge as foolish, Booth," Brennan replied simply.

"Okay," he nodded. "Well, here it is—I've really enjoyed the last month, you know, forgetting all about the stuff that happened to me back there," he explained. "But knowing I had to come here tonight, and swim in that pond one last time, I kinda had to psych myself up for it, so I could put myself in that soldier's mindset for just one more evening. Otherwise, I'd have gone nuts tonight, hearing all these guys talk all about _PCS-_ing here and _redeploying FAC_s there. I guess I sorta got carried away with the role-play, and—" He let his voice trail off and smiled awkwardly. "I know it sounds dumb, but there it is—" He shrugged weakly.

"So, are you saying that the verbal syntax that you've used with me since the end of the ceremony is...what? Some type of remnant of this mindset that you needed to possess in order to function in tonight's social environment?" she asked, still not certain what he was trying to say to her.

Booth narrowed his eyes as he processed her words. "Yeah, basically," he admitted. "All the world's a stage, right, and all of us are merely players...and tonight, I had to play a soldier—just this one last time."

Sudden comprehension dawning on her face, Brennan winced as she clenched her fists and vehemently shook her head. "No—" she whispered. "No, Booth."

"What do you mean, 'no?'" he asked, confusion falling across his face. "Bones?"

"Don't you understand?" she said with a firm shake of her head "It doesn't work like that, Booth—it just doesn't, and that's what I've spent the entire conversation trying to tell you. You can't just pretend that your experiences in the Army aren't a part of you. They're with you all the time...they're with _us _all the time. Why can't you understand that?" She stopped and paused, still shaking her head. "If you can't understand that, then you'll never be able to understand...to see why I'm still scared? And, you'll never be able to see why I...why I can't give you the answer to the question that we both know you want?"

"Bones," he said, his voice low and soft. "I'm not saying those experiences aren't a part of me. But they aren't _all _of me. I'm more than just the sum of my Army experiences, alright? I'm still the same guy underneath all this dressy, jingle-jangle claptrap that I was before. I'm the same guy—" He again gestured to the uniform as he said, "This isn't who I am, and no matter how many times they try to pull me back in, they won't be able to. I'm me, and I'm here—the same I've always been."

"Why...why did you ask me to marry you right now, Booth?" she suddenly asked. "And, I don't mean...why do you want to marry me—but, why did you ask me that question right now?"

"Because I love you, Bones," he said, a plea tugging at the edges of his voice.

"I asked you for proof," she said, almost ignoring his response as she began to verbally reason out the answer to the question she'd asked him herself. "I told you that I needed irrefutable proof to combat the illogical and irrational fear I have that I'll do something to drive you back into the Army one day. Then...then you asked me to marry you." At that realization, at the connection she made in that moment, Brennan looked up to meet Booth's questioning gaze again. "Booth—you can't tell me that the timing of your question is pure coincidence. You can't tell me that the idea of marrying me didn't emerge because of something related to the fact that you were being confronted with the truths of your past as a soldier?"

"Why don't you believe me, Bones?" he asked. "Is it this?" He gestured towards the uniform jacket, with the dangling medals and sewn-on insignia of rank and term of service. "You've never doubted me before—I know you haven't. So, what's different now? Is it this—it it just this damn uniform that's making the disconnect for you? Because, if it is...that's stupid, Bones...it's ludicrous, really, because this is _just _a costume, Bones. It's not _me_. I'm still the same man underneath here as I was before tonight. I still the same guy who you've woke up next to every morning for the last month, who's loved you for years—_I'm still me_."

"I want to believe that," she told him, a bit of desperation creeping into her voice. "I do. Honestly and truly, I swear I do...but, after everything I've learned in the past few hours, can you blame me for feeling doubts, Booth? Can you blame me for doubting what I thought I knew this morning when I woke up next to you? I'm trying—I promise you, I'm trying as hard as I can to rectify everything I've learned, and what you've told me, with what I knew this morning, but...well— it's a lot to process. And, I just can't—I just can't help myself for wanting to question things...and, yes, that even means—as much as it pains me to admit this—why you would ask me that question now. I want to have faith in you, and us, and I'm trying, but I feel like I'm fighting a losing battle, Booth. I feel like I...I'm not certain I know what to believe anymore."

"You want proof?" he asked asked her. "Is that what you need, Bones? Is that it? Because, if it is...just say the word, and I'll give you proof you can believe in—proof I'm still that same guy I swear to God, Bones, I'm still the one they'll never take away from you—I'm still that man, that one you'll never be able to drive away I swear it."

Sighing in heavy exasperation a bit, completely drained as she was from their conversation, Brennan couldn't help it as a few silent tears welled up and escaped her eyes. "I-I... I don't know what I want anymore, Booth. I just—"

"That's not true," he whispered. "You know what you want...that's a given, Bones...a constant. You always know what you want, so just tell me—"

"I don't," she countered with a quiet sob escaping her mouth. "Every time...every time I've asked for something tonight, it's just turned out horribly wrong. I mean, I'm glad we've talked about what we've talked about because it needed to happen, but I just don't think I can handle anymore tonight. I just can't do it—"

Booth reached for her hand and, curling his fingers around hers, pulled them to his chest. He looked into her eyes and saw her pale gray eyes return his gaze, expectantly. Brushing aside the flap of his jacket and the rows of medals that dangled loosely from his lapel, he brought her fingers to rest against his chest, pressing them against his shirt so she could feel his heartbeat.

"I'm here, Bones," he said quietly, tucking his chin low and kissing the top of her hand as his heart beat against her fingertips. "I am not going anywhere. Nothing can drive me away from you—I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere."

"I want to believe that," she said in between soft sobs. "I do, but—"

"I'm the same guy, Bones," he said again as he sat back against the seat and reached for the cuff of his jacket.

"I'm trying to believe that, Booth, really I am, but it's just so much to deal with...I don't know what to do anymore. I just—I'm just so...confused. I think I'm confused, Booth," she said, as she blinked away a few tears at the sudden realization. "I'm...confused? I...I-I'm not certain how it happened, but I...I-I...I think I'm confused, Booth."

"It's okay, baby," he whispered, his hand falling away from his cuff as he leaned in closer to her. "Shhhh..." His lips brushed against her shoulder once before he placed a feather-light kiss along the edge of her collarbone. "Don't be confused. I'm here, and you're here, and we're here together—and that's all that matters. That's all that will ever matter—us, just us." He placed another soft kiss on the top of her shoulder, then pulled away again. He sat back and looked at her, his face relaxing into a smile as he rolled his head to the side. "This—" Booth brought his hand up to her chin and rolled the flat of his fist under her chin. "This is all that matters, and all we need, you and me—and that's the proof." He pulled her chin towards his lips, very gently, holding her gaze for several long moments. Then he kissed her, softly and chastely. "This is it, Bones," he said as he sat back in his seat.

"What are you doing?" she murmured into his kiss, her voice still full of a soft and unspoken plea.

He smiled as he tugged at the cuffs of his uniform jacket and then, leaning forward slightly, shrugged out of it, one sleeve at a time. Relieved of his wool jacket, he carefully folded it in half and gently tossed it on the seat a few feet away. He arched his eyebrow as he watched a vague smile appear on Brennan's lips. He reached up and tugged gently on the loose ends of the black bow tie, letting the ends fall apart before sliding his finger between his collar and the tie to undo it completely.

"You said that you didn't want to ask for proof," he nodded at her. "So, I'm giving it to you so you don't have to ask for it."

"But—"

"No," he said with a shake of his head. "Trust me," he said softly.

She narrowed her eyes and watched him for a moment. He gave her a sheepish look as he reached for his shirt cuff but said nothing. Brennan narrowed her eyes and couldn't help herself as she smiled lightly. "You've done this before," she said, "but it's not going to work this time."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, dropping his hand away from his cuff as he looked at her.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked him again.

"What does it look like?" he retorted in a husky voice.

"_Nuh-uh," _Brennan said through a small hiccup as she hastily wiped away some of her lingering tears from her wet cheeks, further smearing her mascara in the process. "I think you're trying to distract me," she said with a small smile.

"Maybe," he chuckled. "So what if I am? Is it working?" He waggled his eyebrows then reached one hand over the other to begin unfastening his cuff links. "You know, these things are sharp-looking as hell, but they're a real pain," he mumbled, looking up to briefly observe Brennan's glance before wiggling his left cuff link free from the cuff. He rolled the gold-toned cuff link between his fingers for a few seconds, then dropped it in his pocket before turning his attention to this other wrist. "_Ahh_," he sighed. "Better."

"Booth," she murmured, squirming a little in her seat as she watched him—and, as he'd hoped, she became slightly distracted from her earlier emotional distress.

"Something wrong there, Bones?" he asked with a crooked grin. He slid the other cuff link in his pocket and hastily rolled up his sleeves. "Better," he mumbled. "Much better." He reached up to unbutton the top two buttons of his shirt, then sat back languidly against the seat. Booth rolled his head to the side and looked at Brennan, his eyes coasting over her from her bare shoulders down to the gentle flare of her waist and—

"What are you doing, Booth?"

"Looking at you," he said lazily. "Because you look fantastic..."

"You seem awfully sure of yourself there, Booth," she said with an arch of her eyebrows. "So...I believe the appropriate question now is—what precisely is your goal in undressing in the back of this limo?"

"Well," he said, sliding a few inches closer to her. "I was just thinking that, since this damn limousine hasn't moved but ten feet in the last ten minutes, well, that I could show you that I'm still the same guy that you woke up with this morning. I haven't changed, Bones, and I'm not going anywhere...and if you need to see that, if you need to feel that, then that's okay—we can do that...that is, if you're okay with that?"

"I...I'm not certain," she said, her voice still a bit hesitant, but the hopeful look in her eyes soothed Booth's disquiet over that hesitation. "What did you have in mind?" she finally asked softly.

"Mmmm," he murmured. "I was thinking I could show you how I really feel, you know—" He bit back a grin and added, "about you."

"Here?" she barely breathed. "Now?"

"Yes," he growled.

"But, I thought you said earlier that you hated the fact that I insisted we take the limo," Brennan teased him a bit.

"I changed my mind," he grinned sheepishly. "A man's allowed to change his mind about such things, especially under extenuating circumstances like this."

"Like what?" she asked. "What are those extenuating circumstances, Booth?"

"Well, those would be the ones where I'm trying to seduce you, Bones," he said as he reached around to unhook his cummerbund. He arched his back away from the seat, and after unfastening the last hook, pulled the cummerbund off. Tossing it onto the adjacent seat, where it landed on top of his uniform jacket, he shrugged. "Yeah, anytime I'm trying to seduce you is most definitely a very important set of extenuating circumstances." He flashed his brows with a provocative glint in his eyes. "Don't you think so?"

"Yes," Brennan replied, noting how the pitch of her own voice had dropped a little since he began removing his jacket.

Booth smirked and resumed unbuttoning his shirt, frowning a little as he neared his waist and felt how damp his shirt was. The cummerbund was fairly smart-looking, he supposed, but it didn't breathe worth a damn. "So, are you just going to sit there and watch, or what, Bones?"

"I was thinking of sitting here and watching," Brennan said with a hint of teasing in her voice. "Is that a problem?"

"I never thought you were really into the voyeuristic thing, Bones," he said. The thought then occurred to him that someone else other than Brennan might be watching. "Hey, buddy," he said to the driver, whose eyes immediately darted away from the rear-view mirror and back at the road. "Ahhh, pal," Booth called to him again. The driver looked up with a fleeting smirk but said nothing. "So, uh...how does this privacy thingy work, or what?" A minute later, the privacy screen went up and Booth turned to Brennan with a grin. "Ahhh, much better. Yeah, that's _much, much _better," he told her.

"Booth?" Brennan asked as her eyes traced over the curve of Booth's shoulders.

"Yeah, Bones?"

"So, you were saying earlier that you had some idea about how to prove to me that you were the same man I woke up with this morning, didn't you?" she asked him, her voice already a bit rough with desire.

"Yeah," he said as he slid his suspenders off his shoulders, slowly, one at a time. He looked up at her with a faint smile on his lips then jerked his shirt out of his trousers. "Proof," Booth grunted as he shrugged out of his shirt, which he hastily folded—so hastily, it could hardly be considered folding, really—and once again tossed in the direction of the nearby seat where his jacket lay. "Yeah," he murmured again as he raised his arms and peeled off his white tank-style T-shirt.

Brennan felt a warm, wet pulse between her legs at the sight of his tanned, hard, well-toned chest. "I find that I'm not feeling quite as confused as I was before, Booth," she said in a husky voice. "Maybe I do know what I want, after all."

"Oh?" he asked. "And what would that be?"

"I need to touch you," she said with a faint nod. "I need...I think..." her voice trailed off as she looked at his trousers. "I think I need you to be out of that goddamn uniform, Booth...and then I need to touch you." She licked her bottom lip, and then chewed it for a minute, before she nodded. "Can you handle that?"

"God, yes," he groaned.

As soon as he'd said the words, she moved far more quickly that either one of them had probably anticipated given the way her body was encased in the evening gown. Hiking the bottom of the dress up around her hips, she moved so that she was straddling him in his seat. She pressed her chest against his torso before she reached down and closed the last couple of inches between them as she reached for the waistband of his blue trousers. "Is there anything that you need to tell me about these uniform pants, Booth?" she breathed.

"No," he whispered.

"Because I remember the last time I tried to do this, and I couldn't get your damn ACUs off, and you said it was all my fault," she told him.

"I think," he choked, "you won't have any problem with these."

"Good," Brennan said. "Because I consider it not only a pleasure but my solemn duty to get you out of this damn uniform as quickly as possible, once and for all, for what'll hopefully be the last goddamn time." Booth made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a grunt as she unhooked the front of his trousers. Brennan noted a certain tenting in the front of his trousers as she reached for his zipper. "God, I hate your uniforms—I just absolutely fucking hate them."

"Then do something about it," he hissed.

"I suppose you're going to complain if I ask you to promise to never make me take another one off of you, right?' Brennan asked as she let her hand hover on the outside of his slacks. "You will, won't you?"

"I promise," he whispered. "God, Bones," he groaned, squirming a little as her hand continued to linger near his groin without actually touching him. He could feel the heat of her touch through the fabric unpleasantly stretched tightly over his crotch. He leaned his head back against the seat and swallowed. "I'll promise you whatever you want—just...come on," he whispered. "Please."

"So impatient," Brennan said as she slowly pulled down his fly. Her own patience began to fray rapidly as soon as she unzipped him, and he thrust his hips against her hand. "So impatient," she whispered again, laughing softly as she felt a shiver roll up her spine.

"Patience is overrated," he grunted, no longer able to take her teasing. Placing both hands on her hips, he firmly reached down and moved Brennan away from his lap. He gently shifted her into the empty seat next to him before he reached down and pulled his trousers off his hips and, after toeing off his brightly-shined shoes, leaving them in a soft crumple on the floor of the limousine. "Do you want me to be patient, Bones?" he asked her as he reached down to peel off his socks. "Because I think patience sucks...and I'm pretty certain if you want that proof that you'd think that too."

Brennan gulped and stared for a few moments at him as he sat beside her, nearly naked and clearly aroused. "No," she admitted. "You're right. Patience is over—" Her words were cut off when Booth leaned in and covered her mouth with his, and this time, she did not hesitate to open her lips to his tongue. She moaned softly into his kiss as she felt the palm of his hand slide along the outside of her thigh, over the swell of her hip and, pausing briefly to catch the round of her breast, up to the zipper of her dress. He fumbled a little to find the zipper pull, tucked away as it was under a subtly-hidden flap along the top hem of her dress, just below her armpit. Their tongues tangled once more before he pulled away, his breaths coming hard after their kiss.

"Women have it easy," he said between pants. "Men's formal clothing has too damn many moving parts." He briefly stroked his thumb over the arc of flesh between the top of her breast and her armpit. "But this," he said, grasping the zipper and steadily pulling it down. "_This_ is perfect," he said, slowly dragging the zipper down to where it stopped, just below her hip. He smiled and reached up, peeling the sapphire material of the dress away from her.

She grinned at hearing him gasp. As he pulled the fabric away from her chest, he found a dark blue strapless teddy. "You like that, Booth?" she asked, a teasing lilt in her voice.

"Yeah," he whispered as he glanced at what the removal of her evening gown revealed with a small frown creasing his forehead, "but I might take back what I said about fewer moving parts."

Brennan was wearing a single piece dark blue teddy that was akin to a one-piece body suit. The bodice was made of crushed velvet and embroidered with dark blue thread in a pattern that emulated the lace that edged the built-in bra cups. While the teddy was unlike many of its traditional siblings in the fact that it was strapless, a stiff built-in underwire bra helped thrust Brennan's breasts up in imitation of a corset. The piece was really quite pretty, and for a moment, Booth admired it before a tug in his groin realized he'd like it a lot better when it was on the floor of the limo with the various pieces of his dress uniform. Blinking at it several times, Booth was at a loss of what to do as he stared at her and contemplated the confusing piece of lingerie.

"Damn, Bones—how in the hell do I take this thing off?" he muttered, the agitated confusion clearly bleeding into his voice.

Shaking his head, he recalled how he'd seen the garment sit on top of her dresser in a neat pile with the tags still on it for an entire week. _I never thought such a simple little thing could be so fucking irritating_, Booth thought to himself. He remembered walking from the bed to Brennan's bathroom after a mind-suckingly incredible roll between the sheets and stumbling a little in the dark—his natural dexterity still a bit off after the way he'd exploded inside of her just minutes earlier—before reaching for the dresser to steady his balance. Instead of grabbing the cool, hard walnut of the dresser's top, his fingers came to rest on a soft pile of fuzzy, embroidered fabric. He'd paused briefly to run his finger along the garment's underwire before Brennan's voice had called out to him to hurry up and get back in bed. He had considered saying something to her about it, asking her to try it on and model it for him—which modeling exercise he knew would end with a practical demonstration of how rapidly he could get her out of the garment again and flat on her back—but the next several nights they spent at his place, and so it wasn't until that moment in the limo that he saw it again. Staring at the garment, he chastised himself for not finagling a lesson on how to operate it when he had the chance.

"Bones? Ummm..."

Her eyes heavy-lidded already, Brennan said, "That is going to be a rather difficult task to accomplish logistically. There are hooks in the back—"

Moving his hand, Booth ran his fingers down the gentle curve of her spine, and, sure enough, he felt a series of eyehooks hidden underneath a smooth line of blue satin. Quirking an eyebrow at her, he shook his head as he said, "Okay, next question. How in the hell did you even get this on without any help?"

"Carefully," she murmured. "Very carefully."

Shaking his head again at her, he said, "I-I...I never thought I'd say this, but I'm kinda lost here, Bones. I don't know what to do."

Grabbing his hands, Brennan redirected his efforts from her back to the front. She pressed them in a soft line down her stomach and past her navel. "Given our current location, it would be imprudent to actually remove the teddy, Booth."

"But—?" he stared at her as if he were a child and she'd just stolen his lollipop from him or told him that Santa was dead. "But, I thought that we were, _errr_—"

Guiding his fingers down past her navel and towards the curve of her pubic bone, she hissed a bit as his fingers caressed the smooth material that was already slick because of her arousal. "There," she moaned, her eyes glazing over—this time, in no way because of the alcohol she'd consumed during the evening—as Booth finally felt the pads of his fingers run over another set of hooks. "There—right there," she moaned, arching her back a bit as she felt his fingers brush against her. "If you can—that is...there. Right there. If you can concentrate your efforts there...that should facilitate our goals without me having to remove the garment completely."

"_Hmmm_," Booth murmured, brushing his thumb across her most sensitive place, covered though it was in the silky indigo material. He felt her thigh tense against his forearm and couldn't suppress a smile at evoking her impassioned response. "I suppose that will do," he smirked, "though I _was _kind of hoping to get you naked tonight." He felt a tingle in his fingertips and a fierce tugging sensation behind his navel as he unhooked the suspenders that connected the lacy tops of her stockings to the bottom hem of her teddy. "Ohhh," he moaned as the slender, satiny straps fell away, leaving an open expanse of her smooth ivory skin available for stroking.

"That—" She gasped as his fingers slid up the sensitive inside of her thigh to her mound and plucked open the first of the teddy's lower hooks. "_That_ can wait until we get home," she whispered, her breath catching in her throat as he snapped open the second hook. "Ohhh," she moaned, arching her hips into his hands as she rolled her head back. "_Ohhhh_..."

"You said you knew what you wanted now, Bones—so tell me. What do you want?" he whispered back, rolling his head back as he awaited her response.

"_You_," she said, sliding her open hand lightly over his forearm where she could feel the bulging veins that ran over his wrist before they seemed to vanish again under his muscles. She could feel his skin prickle under her touch as his smooth arms became dotted with goosebumps. "I-I...I told you...I want to feel you."

"Do you trust me?" he said in a low, even voice before sucking in a breath as she traced her fingers along his wrist and forearm. "Do you?"

"Yes," she moaned into him.

"No more doubts?" he pressed her. "No more skepticism?"

"No—" she breathed as Booth bent his head down and nuzzling the warm space between her breasts, pressing his thumb against her still-covered clit as he stroked his middle and ring fingers over the damp fabric between her legs. "Oh, God...never again."

"You're certain?" Booth whispered. "You're positive, Bones?" he asked, his lips vibrating against the tender skin of her chest. He opened his mouth and licked the cleft between her breasts, sighing at the sweet taste of her sweat.

"_Yeesss_," she moaned. "I've never been more certain of anyone or anything in my life."

"Great answer," he said as he moved his head up to kiss her again. There tongues dueled for several minutes, his hands continuing to play with her through the partial opening created when he'd unhooked about half of the teddy's clasps. "God, Bones—" he moaned into her kiss. "It's a good thing I didn't know what kind of sexy presents you had hidden under that ridiculously friggin' gorgeous gown of yours," he noted, pulling away from her chest to observe the way her pale gray eyes had darkened at his touch. "I'm pretty certain I wouldn't have stayed for the medal presentation," he grunted. "Hell...we might not've even made it there in the first place."

"Please, Booth," she suddenly moaned, twisting her hips as he toyed with her clit. "No more talking—" she whispered. "Enough..._please_."

She'd pressed her hips into his hand just as the limousine lunged forward.

"What the—?" Booth hissed, moving his hand to palm her belly. "We move sixty feet in sixty minutes," he growled, "and now we're fuckin' moving? Shit." He sighed and looked back at Brennan, whose chest, shoulders and face were flush with want, her breaths coming hard and unevenly as she stared back at him.

"Intercom," she mumbled, reaching for his wrist and pulling his hand back down to her center.

"What?" he asked, his brow crinkled in confusion. He winced, squirming against the leather seat as he felt himself get harder in response to her determined touch.

"The intercom button," she breathed. "Above the bar. Press it, and tell the driver to—"

Booth didn't wait for her to finish. He hunched forward and pressed the square black button over the speaker.

"Hey, pal," Booth said, his Philadelphia accent burning bright on the edges of his voice the same way it did when he talked to cab drivers.

"Yes, sir?" the driver answered smoothly. "Where would you like to go?"

"Show us the monuments," Booth replied vaguely, then released his finger from the intercom button and sat back against the seat.

"Sure thing, sir," the driver answered.

"_Mmmm, _thanks," Brennan mumbled with a lopsided smile as she felt Booth's fingers once more troubling with the remaining hooks on the lower portion of the teddy.

"_Heh_," he laughed. "Don't thank me," he said with a twinkle in his eye. Then, reconsidering his words as he fumbled to undo the remaining tiny hooks with his big, stubby fingertips, he amended, "Well, not quite yet, maybe...because, before I'm done, I'm really going to give you something that you can really thank me for there, Bones."

Brennan arched her back as he continued to tease her with his fingers. "Ohhh...that shouldn't be a problem," she said huskily, writhing against his hand as Booth stroked his fingers over the next hook but made no attempt to unfasten it. "Booth—"

"What do you want, Bones?" he whispered, biting down on his lip as another electric pulse of want coursed from the base of his spine to the tips of his toes. _God, Bones, _he thought silently. "You said you wanted to touch me, huh?" he asked, wincing as his own desire grew more and more intense. "To feel me?"

"Yes," she said, wriggling her hips against the seat as she felt the palm of his hand brushing against her mons. "Oh, Booth," she admitted quietly, sighing at his touch. "I want—"

"What do you want?" he asked.

"You," she repeated. "Ohhh...just you."

Booth grinned. "Why?" he asked, coasting his open hand over her mound and across the delicate skin where the top of her thigh met her hip.

Electrified by his feathery touch, Brennan squirmed again, her body reacting immediately to his caresses while her mind stumbled, a lightheaded sensation coming over her for a few seconds. "Why?" she repeated his question uncomprehendingly.

"Why do you want me?" he asked.

"Because—" she started to mumble. "Just because, Booth."

"Nah uh, Bones," he grinned back at her. "Not good enough. Tell me."

"Oh, fuck—" she breathed. "What...what was the question again?"

"Why...do...you...want...me?" he asked, punctuating each word with a sharp tap of his index finger against the remaining hooks of the teddy. "Or...why do you let me touch you this way when no other man can?"

She opened her eyes and fixed her gaze on his face, her glance skating across his sharply-hewn features before meeting his dark, gleaming eyes. "Because," she admitted, her voice scarcely more than a whisper.

"Because why?" he pressed her.

"Because, I love you," she said. "I love you, and I trust you, and I want you."

"Yes," he whispered back, dragging his thumb firmly across her clit before pinching another hook and unfastening it. "That's right," he murmured. "And because you know that I love you and trust you and want you with everything that I am, Bones."

"Yes," she agreed. "But, I think it's—_ohhhh!"_ She felt herself squirm once more against his hand as she felt a flash of desire pulse from the base of her spine down her legs. "Oh, God...Booth—"

"Yeah, Bones?" he smirked at her, quite pleased with his handiwork.

"It's time for you to stop talking, Booth," she said, a familiar look coming into her eyes. "Now...right now."

"_Hmmmmph,_" he grunted, pinching the last hook between his thumb and forefinger as he unfastened it with a firm slide of his thumb.

Now unfettered, the crotch of her teddy fell open, revealing to Booth's—and, as far as he could tell, to Brennan's—delight, the milky white skin of her lower abdomen and the damp curls that overlay her pulsing core. Booth groaned at the sight and felt a twinge as he noted an ache in his balls. "God, Bones," he whispered as their eyes met briefly. She sat up and scooted sideways so that she lay reclined against the seat cushion on the side of the limo, her legs spread lazily as she watched her partner, wondering what his next move would be.

Booth licked his lips and, in a movement so quick it took Brennan rather by surprise, he moved on top of her, supporting himself on one arm as he leaned in and kissed her. She opened her mouth to him as soon as she felt his warm lips brush against hers, sliding her tongue into his mouth and twirling against his tongue. He moaned into the kiss, emphasizing his want with a firm thrust of his hips against her thigh.

"Oh, Booth," she groaned as he broke the kiss, panting as she reached her hands around his narrow, bony hips and grasped his firm, muscular ass, pulling him against her and sighing at the feel of his erection against her curls. "Oh, God," she whispered again.

Booth flashed a cocky smile flashed at hearing the name of the divine cross his utterly non-believing partner's lips. "Not yet, baby," he said, wiggling his hips to induce her to let go of his ass. "Not quite yet," he whispered.

"Booth," she pleaded with a soft whine.

"Not yet," he said again, unable to conceal a lopsided grin. "I want you, too, Bones." He slipped his hand once more between her legs, threading his fingers through her damp curls before parting her folds with his middle finger. "You're so wet," he told her. "So damn wet—but, not quite yet, huh?"

"Yes," she hissed as he drew his finger across her slippery opening, gathering some of her own lubricant and sliding his fingers up to her clit. "Oh, yes," she whispered, unable at that moment to form anything resembling a coherent thought. "Please, Booth—" She gasped as he began to press on her clit in a circular motion, alternating between strong and light pressure, occasionally using his middle finger to gather a bit more of her fluid, all the while without interrupting the maddening pleasure of his movements. "Ohh...ohhh..._ohhhh_..."

"_Mmmm_," Booth hummed as he pulled his hand away suddenly.

Brennan's eyes flashed open, and she scowled at the loss of contact. "_Nooooo_," she whined outright this time, her forehead crinkled in frustration. "Booth—"

"Easy, baby," he whispered. "I'm not gonna let you down. Have I ever really let you down? I mean, really?" He moved over her again, hovering over her heaving chest as he leaned in to kiss her again. Her mouth grasped at his as she chased his tongue into his mouth, and he groaned from deep in his chest at the taste of her. "Ever?" he gasped, breaking their kiss.

"No," she confessed reluctantly, reaching up and holding his clean-shaven jaw between her hands. She pulled him in again for another wet, clutching kiss, which he returned enthusiastically, working his lips and tongue against her with a soft grunt before he broke away, his breaths falling in hard pants as he reached for the waistband of his boxers.

"That's right," he sighed as he slid his underwear off his hips and tossed them carelessly to the side, pressing his hands into the seat on either side of her heaving chest and lowering his head so he could feel the hard, uneven puffs of her breath against his cheek as he hovered his mouth over her ear.

"Yes," she whispered.

"That's right," he said again, his voice a mere murmur as he slid his lips over her chin and pressing light kisses along her neck. She rolled her head to the side, giving him unfettered access to her neck and shoulder. Her back arched sharply as the feathery ghosting of his lips over her skin gave way to a firm, wet and desperate sucking as he made his way back across her collarbone to the sensitive notch at the base of her neck.

"Ohhhh!" she cried as Booth stroked his rigid arousal in a circular motion around the rim of her opening. "_Unnnnnnggth_," she groaned as he pressed his swollen tip inside of her. She heard him sucking in a breath between his teeth as he threw his head back and pulled out again. "_Boooooth_," she moaned, her jaw tightening in frustration. "Please—"

"Huh," he grunted as he drew his hips back and drilled into her as deeply as he could in a single stroke. "Oh, my God," he hissed, his eyes rolling back into his head as he pulled out and thrust into her again. As he moved into her, the whole world around seemed to fall away. All he could feel was her wet, warm, tight folds as they parted and then surrounded him completely, and all he could see was the way her ivory shoulders, chest and face flushed a deep rose as he pressed into her. Her head rolled to the side, leaning against her shoulder as her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids, and her mouth fell open.

"Ohhh, Booth," Brennan moaned as he drove into her, his hips rolling back and forth in a rhythm that, with every stroke pushed her closer and closer to the edge as each of his movements laid a satisfying pressure against her clit.

"Oh, fuck," Booth said hoarsely. "You feel so fucking amazing." With each thrust, he noticed—with whatever tiny sliver of his mind was left to think with amid the slippery, warm, sucking sensation of driving in and out of her incredible pussy—how delicious the crushed velvet material felt as it dragged back and forth across the smooth skin of his navel. He pulled out and paused, his chest heaving as he looked down at her, her chest flushed a deep pink that contrasted against the dark blue velvet cups of her teddy. Booth reached down with one hand, grunting as he supported himself on the other, and began rubbing tight circles over her clit.

"Oh!" she gasped as her eyes snapped open. "Ahhh..ahhhhhh..._ahhhhhh_..." With each tiny rotation of his thumb, she felt herself spiraling in an ever-tighter gyre, and she was sure she could feel the threads connecting her rational mind and her physical body unraveling with each of his thumb's strokes. "_Ohhhh_, yes," she moaned, closing her eyes as she arched her back and pressed her hips against Booth's.

"Open your eyes, baby," he whispered as he relished the sight of his partner, dangling on the precipice. "I want to see your eyes when you come," he said. "Come on, Bones, stay with me. We're almost there. But, stay with me—just a little bit longer. Open your eyes, beautiful. Open them—please...you know I love seeing your eyes when you come."

Brennan looked up and stared into Booth's dark, dilated eyes, unable to suppress a smile of her own as he gazed down at her with a toothy, lopsided grin. "Okay," she whispered as his thumb began its rolling circles once more. It took only another half-dozen or so of those tiny circles before she felt herself begin to free-fall. "Oh, fuck, Booth—"

"That's it, baby," Booth husked, pulling his hand away and drawing his hips back before plowing back into her with a force that took Brennan by surprise. The moment he felt himself reseated inside of her, her muscles clenched against him and she trembled, a long, low groan passing from her lips as he looked up and saw her pale eyes darken one last time as she shattered around him. He took his next few strokes easily, despite the temptation to chase after her release, and he smiled as he saw her cheeks, flushed yet relaxed.

"Ohhhhh," she sighed, her heart still racing, a dull roar only slightly receding in her ears, and her entire body still tingling in the aftermath of her orgasm.

"So how was that, huh?" he asked with a grin, not waiting to hear her response before he began moving inside of her again. "Ohhh..._mmmm_," he murmured as he gathered momentum, each stroke driving into her harder and faster than the one that preceded it.

He rolled his hips back and forth as he thrust into her, his mouth hanging open, and his breath coming in pants as he felt himself galloping toward release. Brennan reached her hands up, sliding her palms up his sides and over his sweat-damp chest, cupping the round muscles of his shoulders and finally bringing her hands to rest on his biceps. That touch, so simple, did him in, and Booth pressed into her one last time, holding himself deep inside of her as felt his balls hitch moments before he broke.

"Ohhhh, Booth," she whispered as she felt his warm release coat her walls. "God..."

Booth exhaled loudly. "Hoooh, wow," he said with a laugh, pressing once more inside of her as if for emphasis. "Oh, my God, Bones—that was... that was so fucking hard..."

For some reason, a look of confusion marred Brennan's lovely post-orgasmic face as she frowned at Booth and ignored all but one of the words that Booth had spoken. "'Hooah'?" Brennan said as she arched an eyebrow. "You just had sex with me, and you're using Army terminology to describe the way you feel afterwards?" She tilted her head, stared at him for a minute...and then shook her head. "If I didn't think it before, I certainly do now. We've definitely got to get you out of the Army before this starts to affect our sex life. Before I know it you'll be using acronyms."

"What?" Booth blurted. "What are you talking about?" He was certain he'd misheard her in his own post-orgasmic mental fog.

"Isn't 'hooah' that little shibboleth that you and Captain Robinson exchanged when we were talking to him earlier tonight?" she asked him.

"Wait," Booth said, taking a deep breath as he slipped out of her, hissing a little at the sensation as he fell against the seat back on the other side of the limo. He shivered a little at feeling the limo's air conditioning vent blast cold air against his sweaty skin. "I said 'hoooh' just now, not 'hooah.' It's completely different there, Bones."

"They sound quite similar to me," she said, scooting along the seat to bring herself into an upright sitting position.

Booth chuckled. "Wait a sec, alright? 'Hooah' is—well, it's kind of difficult to explain, really, but it's a battle cry—the kind of thing you yell as you're about to leave a position of cover and run into battle, right?" _I can't believe I just had one of the best orgasms of my life, and I've barely caught my breath, and she's got me explaining Army lingo. _

"Why?" she asked him.

"Well, I dunno, Bones—" he blinked at her once before he swallowed. "I mean, it actually started as an acronym I think...it can mean a lot of things...but one of the more common ones is 'heard, understood, and acknowledged'—but, it can mean more than that, too."

"So, you _were _actually using acronyms while you're in bed with me, proverbially that is," she grinned at him.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at her. "I said that's one of the things it can mean, Bones—but there are others... look, it's just kinda evolved into the sort of thing soldiers say to each other. Like I said, it's kinda hard to explain, but if you're talking about something that's really cool or well-executed or another soldier that's really squared away, you'd say, 'hooah.' You know what I mean?" He raised his eyebrows expectantly. "And, for the record, that's most definitely _not _what I said to you after I came."

"Okay," Brennan said as she shrugged her shoulders playfully. "If you say so."

"Stop teasing me," Booth said, reaching up and closing the A/C vent as he glanced over at Brennan. He wagged his finger at her and said, "Otherwise, I'll ask our good driver there to take us back across the bridge into Arlington so that I can remind you that turnabout is fairplay, Bones." Threading his fingers through the damp hair on the top of his head, he looked out the window and smiled at the sight of the Lincoln Memorial passing by. "_Heh_," he said, mostly to himself. "But, as it is, if that's not good timing, I don't know what is—so there you go."

"Yes," Brennan said quietly. She glanced out the window, saw to what he was referring, and then said, "Booth?"

"Yeah, Bones?"

"Can you move a little, please?" she asked.

Noticing the shift in her demeanor, Booth wondered if he'd been more stupid than smart to point out the Lincoln Memorial and the spot that wasn't that far away from the coffee cart where, in a way, so much between them had began.

"Okay," he nodded.

Rolling away from her a bit, he watched as Brennan scrambled and hit the intercom button above the bar.

"Paul?" she asked, somewhat surprising Booth when she used what was obviously the driver's first name.

"Yes, Dr. Brennan?"

"Can you find someplace to park the limo for a few minutes so we can see the Lincoln Memorial with as unobstructed a view as possible?" she asked.

"Of course, Dr. Brennan," the voice came over the intercom.

"Thank you, Paul," Brennan said as she flicked off the intercom with the press of a button.

A couple of minutes later, Brennan had shifted slightly in the back seat, adjusting the clasps on her teddy and shifting her breasts into a more comfortable position as she watch Booth struggle into his boxers. Gesturing at him with her finger, she smiled as she said, "Come here."

"Isn't that my line?" Booth asked.

"Whatever," Brennan said. "I have a question I want to ask you."

"What?" Booth chuckled as he slid closer to her. "You want to pop the question to me now or something, Bones?"

Brennan blinked at him several times and then slowly shook her head. "No, but I did want to talk about why you proposed to me earlier."

"Oh," Booth said, becoming a bit self-conscious as he murmured, "I, uhhh...yeah, about that, Bones—"

"Did you mean it?" she asked, her voice soft as she spoke.

"Yeah, Bones," he said, taking a short breath to collect himself. "I meant it. I think we should get married."

"Had you planned on asking me that question tonight when you did?" she asked, continuing her questioning of him.

Booth nibbled his lip for a moment. "No," he admitted. "But it's something I've been thinking about asking you. I mean, I love you, and I want to be with you."

"Since when?" Brennan asked. "How long have you been contemplating asking me that question?" She stopped and then clarified, "And, although I love you for it, I suppose I need to clarify—how long have you been contemplating the idea as a serious and realistic possibility as opposed to an optimistic desire or hope?"

"Well," he began tentatively. "I think I first really thought about it, like for real, not just some kind of a vague wish, you know—on the way home from work a couple of weeks ago. I was driving home, knowing you were going to be meeting me there, and I was really liking the idea of coming home to you, and how I wished I could have that every night."

"And, so you asking me that question tonight has more to do with that desire than offering me the solid evidence that I told you I would need to make me feel more secure about how things stand between us in as far as what's happened with your experiences with and commitment to the Army?" she continued.

A vague smile flashed across Booth's lips. "Now, wait a second," he said gently. "Evidence, you know, all those facts and probative details you like, they exist independently from the things you use them to prove, right? In fact, if they didn't—if the facts only arose once you needed them to prove something, then they're really not any good as probative evidence, are they? I want to marry you. I wanted to marry you, and had been thinking of how nice it'd be to be married to you, before you asked me to give you evidence that would make you feel more secure about the way things are between us. And the fact that I've been thinking about all that before you ever asked me about it—well, I think that should make you feel even better about that being good evidence, you know?"

Booth leaned forward and reached for his T-shirt and trousers, glancing up at her with a smile as he awaited her reply.

"I suppose...but, it won't be easy, Booth," Brennan said. "If we do this—it's going to be difficult on so many levels...and I don't just mean in the logistical sense of us figuring out how to blend personal and professional and keep things at work at work and keep things at home at home."

"Bones," he said with a smile. "Even if we didn't get married, we'd have to figure that out if we decided to be together. So, from that standpoint, it's not an added burden, right?"

"That's a valid point, but marriage raises other issues, Booth, and before I give you an answer, I need to know a few more answers from you. Is that okay?" she tilted her head at him in askance.

"Of course, Bones," he said with a smile, trying to contain his excitement that maybe, just maybe, she'd be willing to do what he had long hoped but never really expected her to do.

"I have no doubt that between the two of us, the issue of the FBI's fraternization policy is a rather small obstacle in the grand scheme of things. I'm not worried about that. But, what about my other work?" she responded. "Dealing with that as my partner is one thing, but you having to deal with that as my husband would be something else entirely."

Booth furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"If we were to get married, I—you know how important my career is to me, right?" she replied.

"Yes, of course," he said quickly, a slight trepidation edging into his voice that he hoped Brennan didn't notice.

"What about my field work?" Brennan asked with a tilt of her head. "Are you really going to be comfortable for me being gone for spans of time? Now, I'm not saying that I would do something stupid like make a year-long commitment, but during field season in the summer...I wouldn't be maintaining my skill set if I didn't participate in some shorter term projects...and I need to know that I'd be able to do that and that you'd be okay with me doing that."

Booth looked down at his lap, nodded to himself and then looked up at her again. "Yeah," he said. "I'd be okay with that. Maybe once in a while I could come join you—maybe learn some squint-skills? Or just visit?"

"You'd be bored out of your proverbial skull," Brennan said as she eyed him curiously. "Even I know your opinion about...I believe you've described it before in the past as me 'playing in the dirt.'"

"Well," he said with a laugh, realizing that he'd been busted. "Maybe I'd benefit from expanding my horizons." He winked at her. "But, hey, we can figure all that out. So, the answer to your question is—yeah, whether I ever went with you or not, I'd be okay if you went on digs once in a while." He stopped as a thought occurred to him. "Not too long, though—right? No more year-long marathons to find the missing link, right?"

"Barring the occasional request from the UN or other such extra-governmental agencies that you can never tell when they may arise, the normal anthropological field season in countries north of the equator to timed to coincide with the late spring and summer months for a approximately a three-month period between mid-May and mid-August, Booth," Brennan explained. "Now, while it's true that not all sites adhere to such schedules, it is fairly common because of the demands of the academic calendar year."

"So, this is your way of telling me how you want to spend you summer vacations, huh?" Booth joked.

Brennan made a slight face at his joke, and Booth's smile grew wider.

"Well, maybe we can consider allowing a, _heh_, conjugal visit once a month or so—but, you know, whatever you want, Bones—I'll support you in it. I know we can handle it." He smiled and added, "I'd never want to keep you from your work, Bones. I'd never ask that of you. You know that, right?"

Brennan arched an eyebrow at him as she said, "I know, that, Booth." She stopped and then added with a sly look in her eyes, "But, what I don't understand is why is it that men must reduce every serious discussion to sex, Booth?"

"I was making a joke, Bones," he said, a little defensively. "I just meant, if you were gonna be gone all summer, it'd be nice to see you every month or so. To enjoy your company, you know? And, not just in the biblical sense."

Wagging her finger at him, she smiled a bit as she said, "You were only half-kidding... at best. I know you better than that, Booth, so come on—admit it."

"Fine," he chuckled, his defensiveness immediately disappearing. "You're right. I was only half-kidding. But, it's your fault, really. You drive me so crazy with your epically hot body, you can't blame me for dreading a whole summer without having a chance to go at it even one time."

"Booth?" she asked, her voice becoming serious again.

"Yeah, Bones?" he responded, lazily drawing a light line on her bare arm that was giving her goosebumps again.

"You know there would be times when I'm not as sexually appealing as you find me now?" she questioned him.

"Like when?" he asked, his eyes coming to meet hers in an honest stare. "I can't imagine a time when I'd ever find you less appealing than I find you now. Never."

"And...what about children?" Brennan asked suddenly. "When I'm pregnant, I wouldn't be as attractive as I am now. And...well, you know that...you know we've discussed the subject of procreating once before when I asked for you to make a sperm donation that I could use to be artificially inseminated. Now, if anything, my opinions on the matter haven't changed at all, Booth. I want to have children...preferably, _your _children And, since I'm even older now, time would be of the essence since pregnancies over the age of thirty-five are automatically regarded as high-risk pregnancies."

Booth felt his heart nearly jump out of his chest at her words. _Really? Does she really mean what I think she means? _"Bones," he said, his voice a little lower than before. "When you're pregnant, you're gonna be more beautiful than ever. I know you don't believe me, and you probably won't believe me when the time comes, but I can't think of anything that I'd think was more gorgeous than you when you were carrying our child." He shook his head and grinned. "That'd be the most beautiful thing ever."

"So that means that your opinion on the matter would be best verbalized as..." she prompted him, tilting her head at him as she awaited his response.

"How about... 'When can we start?'" he quipped.

She stared at him in that moment, still uncertain what to make of his response.

"Seriously, Bones?" he asked, suddenly uncertain how she couldn't possibly understand his response. "Us being married and having babies? My opinion on that matter is...it'd be a dream come true and everything I've ever wanted in life."

"These are all matters that need to be considered, Booth," Brennan said. "One event logically leads to another, so it must be contemplated in its entirety."

"I want all those things, Bones," he said. "I want to be your husband, to live my life with you, my amazing anthropologist wife, who goes away once in a while to play in the dirt for the summer but who lets me come and visit for a couple of weekends just so I don't lose my mind missing her. I want to make babies with you, and raise children with you—and, if we can convince the FBI that they'd be fucking nuts to break up their best homicide-solving team ever, keep catching bad guys with you. I want it all, Bones—and I want it with you."

"But...while most men can find the idea of procreating after the age of 40 to be a sign of virility, I know that some men also find the idea of having additional children as something that triggers the proverbial mid-life crisis, particularly since you already have a son that's approached adolescence. In effect, you'd be starting what psychologists sometimes refer to as the 'second family'. Are you certain you're okay with that? Having two additional children at your age would mean that they wouldn't be of legal age until when you were approaching the age of 60—" Brennan let her voice trail off.

Booth shook his head and laughed. "A man in his 40s and 50s can raise kids just fine," he said. "I was raised by my grandfather, who was older when he had me and Jared running around his house than I will be when our kids get to be teenagers. So, yeah—I'm okay with that."

"So you don't object to the idea of more than one child, because you know how I've always felt about procreating in multiples. It just makes more logical sense," Brennan told him. She stopped and then said, "See, Booth? It's a lot to consider."

_If I'm dreaming, _Booth thought, _please don't wake me up._

"I want as many babies with you as you're willing to have," he said with a lopsided grin. "A whole house full of kids. Little baby Boneses, running around the house."

"Logistically, while that idea is quite picturesque, it would be quite difficult to achieve since I know that you're going to be difficult about the merging of our financial resources," Brennan said. "And what about that, Booth? You can't honestly tell me that you'll ever be comfortable with the fact that I'm in a higher income bracket than you are."

_Well, that's a little bit of a buzzkill, _Booth thought sourly.

"Comfortable?" he asked. "Look, it'd be a little awkward, you being the more highly-compensated person in the relationship, 'cause I never really thought I'd be in that kind of position. But I could get used to it—I'd try, Bones. I swear...as long as I get to contribute my fair share to the household."

"Somehow I find that very difficult to believe, Booth—are you honestly telling me you'd get to the point where you'd ever feel comfortable using a debit card that was drawn on a joint account, even if most of the money was it in because of my salary or honoraria, etc?" Brennan asked. "To say nothing of my writing—"

"Well," Booth began. "I'd like to think—"

"Then, that raises the completely other issue of how to handle the publicity that our marriage would raise in the press," Brennan said, almost completely ignoring Booth's answer. "And, are you prepared to deal with the questions we're going to get? Because, if you think the questions about you being Andy Lister were bad before—" Brennan shook her head as she considered the way the press would be after her once news of their marriage became widely known.

"I'll be honest, Bones—"

"Of course, I'd like to think that you're always honest with me," she said as she made a small face at him.

At this interruption, Booth did roll his eyes. "Anyway, as I was saying, I kinda like flying under radar a bit—but if it's between dealing with a little news coverage of our marriage or not ever getting to marry you, I'll take the former any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Besides, once it's news, it'll only be news for a little while. People will read it and move on, right?"

"One could hope, but such thoughts are usually too optimistic in my opinion," Brennan said wryly.

"So, any other questions you want to sling at me in the micromanaging of our potential future, there, Bones?" Booth grinned. "Preferences on china patterns, sheet thread-counts, or what?"

Brennan shot him a look as she said, "I'm just trying to understand, Booth."

"I know," he said with a grin. "And I love you for it. But—Bones, sometimes, you can't anticipate everything. You've got to sometimes just go with the flow."

"I know that," she said. "I just—" She stopped and then looked up at him as she said, "Booth?"

"Yeah, Bones?"

"Do you really think we can do this?" she asked. "Really?"

"I think we can do anything we want to," he said slowly. "Don't you?"

"I think that—yes," she said again, her voice firm and clear. "We can do it."

"Wait, are you sure?" he asked, certain that she was not, in fact, referring to what he thought she was.

"I think I'm agreeing to your earlier proposition, Booth," Brennan said.

For several long seconds, Booth was sure he had stopped breathing. "What?" he croaked. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," she said. "Completely. I think I'd like for us to be married."

"Do you mean it?" he breathed, his body tense as he stared at her. "Really?"

Nodding, Brennan turned her body towards Booth. "That is...if you still want me?"

"Always," he said, not waiting a moment longer to hear her response as he pulled her into his embrace. "God, I love you."

"I love you, too, Booth—" she stopped talking, long enough to smile at him. "So...are we doing this?"

A bright smile shining on his face, he nodded as he said, "Yeah, Bones—we are...and it's just the beginning. You know that right?"

"Yes," she said. "I know that...just the beginning."

And, for them—it was

* * *

><p><strong>~The End~<br>**

* * *

><p><strong>AN2**: So, there you have it—the scintillating conclusion. Now, I hesitate to say this...because, well, I have before and then this fic was born...but, this is (most likely) the end of this particular story arc. We think we've taken it just about as far as it can go. Many thanks to all our readers (both seen and unseen)...but, one last time—with feeling...how about you'll let us know what you thought of how we wrapped things up? We hoped you've enjoyed it..and see you in the funny pages!~


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